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The average velocity is always less than or equal to the average speed of an object. This can be seen by realizing that while distance is always strictly increasing, displacement can increase or decrease in magnitude as well as change direction. In terms of a displacement-time (x vs. t) graph, the instantaneous velocity (or, simply, velocity ...
Instantaneous velocity of a falling object that has travelled distance on a planet with mass , with the combined radius of the planet and altitude of the falling object being , this equation is used for larger radii where is smaller than standard at the surface of Earth, but assumes a small distance of fall, so the change in is small and ...
Intuitively, the velocity increases linearly, so the average velocity multiplied by time is the distance traveled while increasing the velocity from v 0 to v, as can be illustrated graphically by plotting velocity against time as a straight line graph. Algebraically, it follows from solving [1] for
Since the velocity of the object is the derivative of the position graph, the area under the line in the velocity vs. time graph is the displacement of the object. (Velocity is on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. Multiplying the velocity by the time, the time cancels out, and only displacement remains.)
If is the length of the path (also known as the distance) travelled until time , the speed equals the time derivative of : [2] =. In the special case where the velocity is constant (that is, constant speed in a straight line), this can be simplified to v = s / t {\displaystyle v=s/t} .
If the mass does not change with time, then the derivative acts only upon the velocity, and so the force equals the product of the mass and the time derivative of the velocity, which is the acceleration: [21] = =.
Many other fundamental quantities in science are time derivatives of one another: force is the time derivative of momentum; power is the time derivative of energy; electric current is the time derivative of electric charge; and so on. A common occurrence in physics is the time derivative of a vector, such as velocity or displacement. In dealing ...
It is an alternative to ordinary velocity, the distance per unit time where both distance and time are measured by the observer. The two types of velocity, ordinary and proper, are very nearly equal at low speeds. However, at high speeds proper velocity retains many of the properties that velocity loses in relativity compared with Newtonian theory.