Distance/time Graphs

Graphs can be a huge aid in understanding concepts.  Our first graph in this class will be a distance/time graph.  We put time on the X axis (that's abscissa if you're an egghead) and distance on the Y axis.
 

Look at the picture below... Imagine someone has walked across a room while dropping a lump of clay every second.  When they walked slowly, the lumps landed close together, and landed far apart when the speed was higher.(We'll say that each graph block equals one meter)

If the distances between successive lumps stays the same, we know that the speed was constant and WHENEVER the distance varies from lump to lump we know the object was ACCELERATING.

NOTE: If the spaces get larger, acceleration is positive; if smaller it's negative.


Next, we use a meter stick to get the location of each lump.
 

meters  seconds
0 1
.5 2
1 3
1.5 4
2 5
2.5 6
3 7
3.5 8
4 9
4.75 10
5.5 11
6.75 12
8.5 13
10.5 14
12.4 15
14 16
15 17
15.75 18
16.3 19
16.8 20


Finally, we can put our points on a graph.
 

Here is what I wound up with:
Use the table below to construct a graph. (make the graph larger and easy to read)
 

d t
2.5 1
3.6 2
4 3
4.9 4
5 5
5 6
5 7
5.5 8
7 9
9 10
11 11
11.8 12
13 13
13.2 14
13.2 15