SCIENCE CONCEPT:
- Calculating speed requires measuring time of travel and distance traveled.
Speed changes during the flight of a tennis ball.
STUDENT OBJECTIVE:
- The student will make measurements of the average speed of a tennis ball
for various parts of its flight, and explore how speed changes during the
flight.
OVERVIEW:
- The student will make measurements of the average speed of a tennis ball
for various parts of its flight, and explore how speed changes during the
flight.
TEACHER TEXT:
-
Think about the units that you use to describe speed. You might drive a
car at 50 miles per hour. You may know that light travels at a speed of
about 300,000 kilometers per second. Some glaciers move at a speed of 6
inches per year. These speeds are all very different, but they all measure
a distance traveled divided by the length of time spent traveling. This is
the definition of average speed.
To measure the average speed of an object, you need to know how far it went
in a certain amount of time.
In the previous experiment, you measured the time it took a tennis ball to
fly across the court. If you can measure the distance that it traveled,
you can calculate its speed.
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PREPARATION TIME:
- None
LESSON TIME:
- 45 minutes.
TEACHER PREP:
- None
WORDS TO KNOW:
- baseline
- service line
- serve
- return
- average
- instantaneous
- air resistance
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