Animation 3: Graphing Motion

You have all the concepts you need to tell the story of motion. You know what motion is and how to describe it with distance, direction, speed and velocity. Now it is time to put everything together to tell the story, but maybe not with words. Maybe a better way to put it is that you'll be telling the motion story by graphing it. A simple graph can provide a whole lot of information about how, where and in what direction an object moves.

Watch this animation to learn how to use graphs to tell the story of motion. As you watch the segment, you might want to review the definitions of specific terms.

Stop the animation at any time, watch it again, or read the transcript.

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Graphing Motion Transcript

When measuring and describing motion, there are a lot of details to capture and it can involve a ton of complicated math. But it turns out, graphs are an easy way to visualize motion, if you know how to interpret them. It can get tricky, so we’ll break it down to the basics.

On screen title: Motion Graph Basics

The most basic motion graphs map out the position of an object over a timeline. As time ticks by, and the object moves (or doesn’t), it will be plotted out in different positions along the timeline.

So, if an object is sitting still for ten seconds the graph will look like this.

If an object moves from one place to another at a constant speed, its graph looks like this.

If an object starts. Then stops, then starts, and stops and then moves back to its original spot, its graph looks like this.

If the slope of the line is steep, it traveled from here to there fast. If the slope is shallow, the object took its sweet time.

From a single motion graph, you can tell distance traveled, displacement, speed, velocity, and all kinds of information about its motion and path, while skipping most of the complicated math.

Take Notes

In the space below write one sentence describing what is plotted on a motion graph. List 3 different things you can read off a motion graph.