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Light moves at a speed of 299,792,458 m/s, or 299,792.458 kilometres per second (186,282.397 mi/s), in a vacuum. The speed of light in vacuum (or ) is also the speed of all massless particles and associated fields in a vacuum, and it is the upper limit on the speed at which energy, matter, information or causation can travel. The speed of light ...
The average speed of an object in an interval of time is the distance travelled by the object divided by the duration of the interval; [2] the instantaneous speed is the limit of the average speed as the duration of the time interval approaches zero. Speed is the magnitude of velocity (a vector), which indicates additionally the direction of ...
There are two main descriptions of motion: dynamics and kinematics.Dynamics is general, since the momenta, forces and energy of the particles are taken into account. In this instance, sometimes the term dynamics refers to the differential equations that the system satisfies (e.g., Newton's second law or Euler–Lagrange equations), and sometimes to the solutions to those equations.
The general formula for the escape velocity of an object at a distance r from the center of a planet with mass M is [12] = =, where G is the gravitational constant and g is the gravitational acceleration. The escape velocity from Earth's surface is about 11 200 m/s, and is irrespective of the direction of the object.
Displacement is the shift in location when an object in motion changes from one position to another. [2] For motion over a given interval of time, the displacement divided by the length of the time interval defines the average velocity (a vector), whose magnitude is the average speed (a scalar quantity).
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.)
The speed attained during free fall is proportional to the elapsed time, and the distance traveled is proportional to the square of the elapsed time. [40] Importantly, the acceleration is the same for all bodies, independently of their mass. This follows from combining Newton's second law of motion with his law of universal gravitation.
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 ...