You are driving down a straight highway at 20 m/s (72 km/h) on a foggy night. Suddenly you see a truck stopped directly in front of you a distance d down the roadway.
(a) What distance will you have travelled after 1 s? ... After 2 s?

Areas representing displacements during the first two seconds.

Find the distances travelled from the areas

The areas are calculated using the units and scales of the axes, not the dimensions in units of length. One small square of the graph paper has a width of 0.5 s and a height of 2 m/s. Thus a square represents a displacement of (0.5 s)×(2 m/s) = 1 m.

Oddly shaped areas can sometimes be divided into rectangles and triangles whose areas can be calculated individually and then summed.

Irregular areas can be estimated by counting small squares of the graph paper. Partial squares can be estimated as a fraction of an entire square.

What to do

  • Calculate the displacement during the time period 0 s to 1 s.
  • Calculate the displacement during the period 0 s to 2 s.
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