Is there a way to build upon our average kinematic quantities between two points in time to describe the motion of an object an any instant in time?\u00a0 Yes, by making the time interval for our average calculation smaller and smaller.\u00a0 Initially, we might calculate the average velocity for an object over a ten second interval.\u00a0 We could redo the calculation for a one second interval. But what happens as the time interval gets increasingly smaller?\u00a0 As 1.0 s becomes 0.1 s, then 0.01 s, the approximation of the velocity provided by the average velocity value gets closer and closer to the actual value of the object\u2019s velocity at a single instant. \u00a0What we are left with is the instantaneous velocity of the object.\u00a0 If we start with an object\u2019s average acceleration between two points in time, we can use the same procedure to make the time interval that we use in our calculation smaller and smaller.\u00a0 As the time interval decreases toward zero, we are left with the object\u2019s instantaneous acceleration at a single point in time.<\/p>\n
We can use the relationship between position, velocity, and acceleration to derive a set of equations which describe an object\u2019s motion as a function of time.\u00a0 These equations of motion allow us to calculate where an object and how it is moving at any point in time during the interval where the equations describe the object\u2019s motion.\u00a0 To start with, we will look at the simplest types of motion, uniform motion where the velocity of the object doesn\u2019t change as it moves and motion with constant acceleration.\u00a0 As we will see, the equations of motion for these two relatively simple way that objects can move can accurately describe a wide variety of objects as they move in the real world.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t