Acceleration

Physics homework for 10/20/14:

Mon Oct 20 - "Acceleration" Blog Post

A sports car and a school bus are stopped at a traffic light.  Use your physics vocabulary words (correctly) to completely explain the differences and similarities of the motion of these two vehicles as each goes from a stop to the speed limit of 30 mph.  Also describe the differences and similarities as they stop at the next red light.

Monday, October 20th, 2014

                        Acceleration: School Bus Vs. Sports Car

Today in class we learned about acceleration and compared it to some other variables. This blog post will mostly be about a sports car and a school bus, but before I get into that, what is acceleration? Acceleration is the opposite of constant velocity which is velocity where the speed and direction remain the same. So the rate of the speed is steady and the object is only traveling in one direction. If acceleration's the opposite of constant velocity, you can guess that acceleration does NOT remain the same some where. And you are right! With acceleration, the velocity changes, the direction changes, or both change! Acceleration is also a vector quantity meaning it has magnitude and direction. The formula for it is change in velocity over change in time and it is measured in m/s^2. There can be negative acceleration and positive acceleration, basically it is when something is speeding up or slowing down. 

Now, let us talk about sports cars and school buses!

Let's say a school bus and a sports car are at a red light and once the light flashes to green the vehicles zoom off at 30 mph. And let's say they stop after a while at another red light. There is a lot of physics involved there, so let's analyze the physics. First, we'll observe the differences and similarities of the motion of the vehicles when they are traveling from the first red light at 30 mph. Then we will look at the similarities and differences of the vehicles from their 30 mph to the next red light.

To begin, at the first red light the vehicles are at a COMPLETE stop with a speed and/or velocity of zero. Same for the acceleration. The vehicle will be displaced from this position as it travels forward and away from the red light. So the red light switches to a green light and these vehicles zoom away. Now, the sports car might reach the limit faster than the bus due to how it runs, so its motion will most likely be faster than the school bus at most times. The sports car will have a positive acceleration, increasing its speed and/or its velocity until it reaches 30 mph. The car's velocity is most likely NOT constant at it might rev up its engines and jet off super fast at a nonlinear rate, but eventually it might need to slow down to stay close to the speed limit. So the car might have a negative acceleration at times. The car might change its direction while driving too, not just its velocity. The car might need to take a sharp turn and/or speed up or slow down. And it will be displaced a certain amount from its original position THOUGH, if the car is swerving around the damn neighborhood looking all fine and fresh then it might not have been displaced much at all since the car may not be far from its original position any more. So any ways, while this car is traveling, trying to keep a constant velocity of 30 mph (but possibly not necessarily always at 30 mph), the school bus might be farther behind because it needs to accelerate positively. School buses might take longer to really speed up, so the velocity might accelerate much more gradually than compared to the sports car. And since the velocity is changing and not remaining constant it is accelerating, unlike constant velocity. The bus slowly builds up its velocity to 30 mph and it might be farther behind than the sports car, but generally both vehicles are trying to keep a constant velocity of 30 mph forward. They will probably both have to accelerate positively and negatively just to remain within the limit or just near it. And they are usually going forward or taking turns around streets because school buses need to drop off kids and kids live in various neighborhoods and sports cars need to pick up chicks - you know, for the farm nearby the playground :^). The school boys love chicks :-D - why are you staring at me like that? D:

Any ways, moving on! 

So these two awesomely cool vehicles are nyooming down the streets trying to keep a constant velocity and they are nearing a stop light. The sports car will have to punch the brakes so that it just doesn't zoom past the traffic lights. The sports car can probably negatively accelerate quickly though and bring itself to a stop. So the acceleration would have negatively gone down due to the velocity changing, the velocity decreased and the time increased. The bus will negatively accelerate as well to a slow stop, it can probably stop better than the car due to its acceleration rate compared to the car. The velocity goes down until the bus stops. The main difference is that the car in general traveled faster (accelerated) than the bus. The car need to negatively accelerate fast enough in contrast with the bus and it probably reached the stop light faster than the bus due to its velocity. It probably had a much less constant measure of speed than the bus. On the other hand, both vehicles did negatively accelerate to a stop and had their velocities go down quite a lot. The bus might not stop first, or it might, but either way both vehicles slowed to a stop by changing their acceleration. 

Any ways, that is my take on the acceleration topic of buses vs. sports cars. But good luck to Ms.Reid with her work, she probably has some stuff to catch up on so I hope it goes well ;^;7. 

Sucky blog post as usual, but buenas noches mi amigos :33 <3 .

Have science ponies!!!~~