Day 7: Acceleration

FQ:  How can we tell if something is accelerating?

1. Watch

Watch the video to review distance, displacement, speed, and velocity, and to learn about acceleration.

2. Class Demo:  x-t graphs for constant velocity and constant acceleration  (tapper or motion detector)

2. Read

Acceleration is a change in velocity over time. There are three ways an object can accelerate: It can speed up, it can slow down, or it can change direction. 

The formula to calculate velocity is shown below: 

To use a scientific formula, we can plug in measurements for each variable. Context clues and units tell us which numerical values to plug in for each quantity. 

All formulas for the course are listed on the Physical Science Reference Tables

3. Group activity: Calculating speed and acceleration 

4. Practice

Click "take the quiz" to check your understanding. 

5. Project work:  Analysis #2 and #7

     Calculate acceleration for starting/stopping