Kinematics
Student Learning Objectives.
3.A.1.1: The student is able to express the motion of an object using narrative, mathematical, and graphical
representations.
3.A.1.2: The student is able to design an experiment investigation of the motion of an object.
3.A.1.3: The student is able to analyze experimental data describing the motion of an object and is able to express the
results of the analysis using narrative, mathematic, and graphical representations.
Science Practices
Problems.
1. While John is traveling along a straight interstate highway, he notices that the mile marker reads 260 km.
John travels until he reaches the 150 km marker and then retraces his path to the 175 km marker.
a. What is John’s resultant displacement from the 260 km marker?
b. How far has he traveled?
2. A runner is jogging at a steady vr = 5 km/hr. When the runner is
L = 5 km from the finish line, a bird begins flying from the
runner to the finish line at vb = 10 km/hr (2 times as fast as the
runner). When the bird reaches the finish line, it turns around
and flies back to the runner. Even though the bird is a dodo, we
will assume that it occupies only one point in space, i.e., a zero
length bird. How far does the bird travel?
3. A bug completes one lap along the edge of a circular planter of
radius 10 cm in 8 s. How fast was it traveling?
4. The speed of light is 3.00 × 108 m/s. How long will it take light to run a 5 km race?
5. A man jogs at a speed of 1.3 m/s. His dog waits 4.3 s and then takes off running at a speed of 2.4
m/s to catch the man. How far will they have each traveled when the dog catches the man?
6. Both car A and car B leave school at the same time, traveling in the same direction. Car A travels at
a constant speed of 75 km/h, while car B travels at a constant speed of 85 km/h.
a.
b.
c.
d.
How far is Car A from school 2 h later?
How far is car B from school 2 h later?
How long does it take car A to reach a gas station a distance 100 km from the school?
How long does it take car B to reach the gas station?
7. Consider a moving object whose position x is plotted as a function
of the time t on the following figure: Clearly, the object’s motion is
different during the time intervals denoted I, II and III in the figure.
a. During these three intervals, when was the object’s speed highest?
b. During which intervals did the object’s speed remain constant?
Explain how you know.
8. Consider the following graph. The initial position of the object is 2 m. Consider positive
displacement to be to the right and negative displacement to be to the left.
a. What is the position at 4 s?
b. What is the velocity at 10 s?
c. During what time frame does the object have the greatest speed?
9. The velocity of the transverse waves produced by an earthquake is 5.1 km/s, with that of the
longitudinal waves is 8.67 km/s. A seismograph records the arrival of the transverse wave 73
seconds after that of the longitudinal waves. How far away was the earthquake?