Precalculus: Particle Motion1

Objectives

• Students will analyze the relationship between the motion of a particle along a straight line and the graph of the position function that is piecewise linear.
• Students will analyze the relationship between the graph of the position function and the graph of the velocity function.
• Students will analyze the relationship between the graph of the velocity function and the cumulative distance traveled by the particle.

Vocabulary

• position
• velocity
• magnitude
• cumulative distance
• particle motion

About the Lesson

This lesson involves the motion of a particle along a straight, horizontal line.
As a result, students will:

• Analyze the graph of a particle's position function based on numerical information about its position, velocity, and cumulative distance traveled.
• Analyze the motion of the particle based on the graph of its velocity function, and determine the velocity of the particle by finding the slope of the position function.
• Compute the area of rectangles to discover how the graph of the velocity function is related the cumulative distance the particle travels.