Regents Physics

Knowing only an object’s distance and displacement doesn’t tell us the whole story. Going back to our deer example, there’s a significant difference in our picture of the deer’s afternoon if the deer’s travels occurred over 5 minutes (300 seconds) as opposed to over 50 minutes (3000 seconds).

How exactly does our picture change? In order to answer that question, we’ll need to introduce some new concepts – average speed and average velocity. Both physics quantities use the same formula and the same units (m/s), but the symbols stand for different things in each formula. In this way, you can re-use the same formula to give you two different physics quantities. The formula, available on the back page of your reference table, is: