Name_________________________
Period ________________________
pHet Lab 1 : Moving Man’s Kinematics Graphs
1. Click: http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/moving-man/moving-man_en.jnlp
2. Click on the “acceleration vector” and velocity vectors” displace him to indicate changes in arrows.
3. Give position, velocity, and acceleration all a positive value. (You can either type a value, or move
the bar on the left hand side). Play with this for a few minutes then select the “chart” tab.
4. Use the slide bars to change the motion values. Set the parameters in a certain fashion of your choice.
Press “Play”. Sketch the three motion graphs for this first motion in A on the next page. When
one of the graphs is about to go outside the given scale, don’t draw this part. Click “Clear” and “Yes.”
5. For Graphs B on back: slide the tabs to give position and velocity a negative value, but acceleration a
positive value. Press play. Sketch graphs in B on the next page. Click “Clear” and “Yes.”
6. For Graphs C on back Give position a negative value, velocity a positive value, and acceleration a
negative value. See if you can make all the graphs last the full 20 seconds without going off the screen
and resetting. You may not set anything to zero. Sketch the three motion graphs in C for your
setting, and record the starting position, velocity, and acceleration.
7. Once finished go to car lab setup for motion measurements.
Postlab Task A:
3) What does constant acceleration (Cop Car)
look like on a position vs. time graph?
Position
Position
1) What does constant velocity (Speeder Car)
look like on a position vs. time graph?
Time
Time
4) What does constant acceleration look like
on a velocity vs. time graph?
Velocity
Velocity
2) What does constant velocity look like on a
velocity vs. time graph?
Time
Time
Postlab Task B:
5) From your graph of C prove the following three formulas hold for the graph trio (like we did in
class!)
v  v0  at
1
x  v0t  at 2
2
v 2  v0  2ax
2
6) Calculate the time and distance it will take the cop (silver car) to catch the speeder (Army Car)?
Remember different lab groups used different cars.