Physics 1
Kinematics Notes
One-Dimensional Motion
[Chapter 2 Objectives]
BHS
-> Mr. Stanbrough ->
Physics -> Mechanics
-> Kinematics -> this page
What is One-Dimensional Motion?
In our study of kinematics, we will (mostly) restrict ourselves to
one-dimensional motions - that is, motions along a straight line.
Some examples of one-dimensional motions are:
- a car moving on a straight road
- a person walking down a hallway
- a sprinter running on a straight race course
- dropping a pencil
- throwing a ball straight up
- a glider moving on an air track
- and many others...
While it is true that this excludes many interesting motions - the
motion of a baseball hit to center field is a two-dimensional
motion, for example - there are at least two reasons for restricting
our current study to one-dimensional motions:
- One-dimensional motion is the simplest case.
- When you continue your study of Physics in more advanced
courses, you will find out that more complex two-and
three-dimensional motions are often studied by decomposing them
into two or three one-dimensional motions.
Links:
One
Dimensional Motion - a page from the Zona Land tutorial - very
nice, but you'll need a VRML plug-in to view the animations..
[Chapter
2 Objectives]
BHS
-> Mr. Stanbrough ->
Physics -> Mechanics
-> Kinematics -> this page
Last update November 22, 2005 by JL
Stanbrough