ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos

Physics: Scalars vs. Vectors 33 Views


Share It!


Description:

Scalars v. vectors. Speed v. velocity. Distance v. displacement. Kramer v. Kramer. We'll cover all the big smackdowns.

Language:
English Language
Subjects:

Transcript

00:01

No steelers versus vectors battle royal citizens for replacement with

00:09

ten grand just like we can't be negative displacement can

00:14

be his basement requires direction that's considered positive there's in

00:18

victor's a numerical value on it so one dimensional vectors

00:24

have value for magnitude and direction that's philosophy inspector uses

00:31

displacement average last year a single more fun with units

00:39

you need to be the same when adding subtracting easy

00:42

when using metric system imperial system in it so easy

00:45

for you nick Using a girl all right let's do

00:47

this physic can be tough right Lots of setting up

00:51

experiments tracking data and crunching numbers we think it's time

00:55

to take a vacation off on a plane find a

00:58

nice beach somewhere ten thousand kilometers away that's the life

01:04

but sadly all the occasion must end and we've got

01:07

to come back to the real world so here's a

01:09

question How far did we travel Sure we can say

01:13

the total distance traveled with twenty thousand kilometers but we're

01:16

back where we started So in the long run was

01:19

there any real change in our position Yep There's physics

01:23

making stuff complicated again Sadly we don't actually get to

01:26

go to the beach but our imaginary trip lets us

01:29

look at the difference between distance and displacement know you

01:32

may have heard about displacement in terms of a submerged

01:36

object displacing fluid but it means something totally different here

01:40

Distance is pretty understandable We talked about distance all the

01:43

time like if we run a ten k race even

01:45

if we go in a circle and end up back

01:47

where we started we still ran ten kilometers are fitness

01:51

tracker wouldn't lie to us so distance is just a

01:53

measurement The total amount traveled but displacement is different displacement

01:58

measures how far we are from a c starting point

02:01

So if you run that ten k and finished back

02:03

at the starting line are displacement is in ten kilometers

02:07

in fact it zero kilometers no matter how sweaty we

02:11

might be and what would our displacement be past the

02:14

finish line In other words behind the starting point in

02:18

that case are displacement would have a negative value It

02:21

really depends on which direction we've chosen to be positive

02:24

when we're setting up a vector map we can think

02:27

of ourselves as an observer and will pick which direction

02:30

To face an emotion going in the same direction we're

02:33

facing will be positive and in emotion in the other

02:36

direction will be negative now in america distance can never

02:40

be negative There's no such thing as a negative ten

02:42

k even if he ran backwards Distance is a scaler

02:46

measurement A scaler quantity is something that has a numerical

02:50

value known as magnitude Think wait or area or value

02:55

or flying ten thousand kilometers and back anything that could

02:58

be quantified as just a number vectors are different Vector

03:03

is a measurement that has both of value and a

03:06

direction that covers things like heat flow or forces or

03:10

you guessed it displacement so on our vacation are total

03:14

displacement by the end of the round trip would be

03:17

nothing zilch Zero nothing to show for it but beach

03:21

sell fees vectors can depend on who's doing the measurement

03:24

also like if we're playing catch with a friend when

03:28

you throw the ball it's moving at a certain speed

03:30

away from you and that would be positive velocity relative

03:34

to your position But it's coming right at your buddy

03:38

and at a negative velocity relative to his position so

03:42

he better be paying attention You want to avoid stopping

03:45

any velocity with your face doing that with scaler quantities

03:49

is easy Since a scaler is the same thing as

03:52

a number we can just add subtract divide you name

03:55

it Math with vectors can get tricky though you can't

03:58

really multiply up times left For example For now we'll

04:02

stick with one dimension of movement and we'll dig into

04:05

the multidimensional stuff later Because vectors involved movement we usually

04:10

see them drawn as an arrow The length of a

04:12

narrow indicates the vectors magnitude and the direction of the

04:16

arrow indicates well the direction of the vector here's an

04:19

example of a vector diagram of an airflow We can

04:22

see that there are different directions for the force is

04:25

involved and we can see that there's a pattern to

04:27

the forces Also we can see that we need to

04:30

find a basement and hunger down How can we tell

04:33

that something in an equation is a vector Usually it'll

04:36

have a narrow over it like this Otherwise you might

04:39

see it written in italics or bold it and sometimes

04:42

we might see a plus or minus sign in front

04:44

Of a number Just make sure that when you're writing

04:46

a vector make it clear jesse's distance and displacement are

04:50

related so our speed and velocity the difference velocity is

04:54

a vector quantity and speed is a scaler meaning velocity

04:58

has a direction and the equations to calculate them are

05:01

almost the same too Speed equals the change in distance

05:05

over the change in time's and velocity equals the change

05:09

in displacement over the change in time Distance is always

05:14

a positive number so speed is always positive too Like

05:17

in the real world you can't travel backwards in time

05:19

When sheldon comes up with something to time travel then

05:22

we can revisit the negative sign their velocity Now it

05:25

can be negative if the displacement is negative When we're

05:29

dealing with displacement we always have to make sure that

05:31

we're paying attention to the starting value because displacement doesn't

05:34

have to start at zero let's say your dog is

05:37

hanging out in the park right Oh spots a squirrel

05:39

twenty meters away and it's on mr squirrel makes a

05:42

dash for the tree forty meters away from fido and

05:46

it's a lucky day for the rodent who gets there

05:47

Just before the pooch and we'll say it took them

05:50

both about five seconds Calculating the velocity for your dog

05:53

would be pretty straightforward The change in distance is forty

05:56

meters and the change in time is five seconds His

05:59

velocity for this strip would be eight meters per second

06:02

But the squirrel is slower because from the start he

06:06

already had a displacement of twenty meters relative to your

06:09

best friend So we have to subtract the initial displacement

06:13

from the final displacement and we've got to remember to

06:15

do that any time the initial displacement isn't zero so

06:19

when we do the math we find that the squirrels

06:21

velocity is four meters per second and yet he still

06:24

has the gall to taunt fire just like velocity can

06:27

change based off of our position The value of velocity

06:30

can change based off of what we're looking for like

06:33

average versus instantaneous For example let's go backto our plane

06:37

trip How far away did we say that Beach wass

06:40

ten thousand kilometers that's about the distance from los angeles

06:43

to new zealand So let's say it takes us fifteen

06:46

hours to get there That means our velocity for the

06:48

whole trip would average ten thousand kilometers divided by fifteen

06:51

hours or about six hundred sixty seven kilometers per hour

06:54

to the southwest But what if we have to stop

06:57

in fiji to re fuel What would our velocity be

07:00

at that point in time It would be zero in

07:03

no direction at all Just sitting on the tarmac playing

07:07

candy crush for the twelve straight our that's the difference

07:10

between average velocity and instantaneous velocity average velocity covers the

07:14

whole time period Instantaneous philosophy is just for one moment

07:18

in the time period both are useful We just need

07:21

to make sure we know which one we're looking for

07:24

When it comes to velocity It's also important to know

07:26

the difference between constant and average let's say instead of

07:30

having to re fuel were able to catch a nonstop

07:32

flight instead and just help ourselves think we'll say this

07:36

is a magic plane that always has the exact same

07:38

velocity Let's say that eight hundred kilometres to the southwest

07:42

what's our velocity an hour into the flight eight hundred

07:45

kilometres at our nine Yep That's right Eight hundred Constant

07:50

velocity means that at any point in time the total

07:53

change in displacement divided by the total change in time

07:56

will equal the same number as we've seen that's not

08:00

necessarily the case for average velocity Okay so let's put

08:03

some of this speed of velocity step to the test

08:06

with something that's a little less straightforward literally lets say

08:09

its errand day we need to go to the grocery

08:12

store and grab a few things The grocery store is

08:14

five kilometers to the west of our house and it

08:17

takes us ten minutes to get there nothing but green

08:19

lights for this trip but all that shop and makes

08:21

us hungry So instead of going home we get some

08:24

tacos from our favorite taco joint that's two kilometers to

08:27

the east of our house This part of the trip

08:29

from the store to our delicious snack takes twelve minutes

08:33

and we're going to say that east is the positive

08:35

direction for all this Now we can run some numbers

08:38

and we want those numbers to be in terms of

08:40

meters seconds and meters per second We're going to find

08:43

out the average velocity for the first part of the

08:45

trip the average speed for the first part of the

08:48

trip the distance for the whole trip the displacement for

08:51

the whole trip and the average velocity and average speed

08:54

for the whole thing too got it So the first

08:57

part of the trip took us five kilometers to the

08:59

west over ten minutes remember the equation for velocity is

09:02

this velocity equals the final displacement minus the initial displacement

09:07

over the final time minus the initial time and since

09:10

we want are answers to be in meters per second

09:12

let's do our conversion now before we forget so we'll

09:15

change five kilometres to five thousand meters and ten minutes

09:18

to six hundred seconds and because east is our positive

09:21

direction that makes west the negative direction since our starting

09:25

displacement and starting time we're both zero now our equation

09:29

looks like this velocity equals negative five thousand meters minus

09:33

zero meters divided by six hundred seconds meaning our velocity

09:37

for the first part of trip was negative Eight point

09:40

three three meters per second as far as our speed

09:43

Well the distance is the same as the displacement for

09:45

this first leg of our journey and we've already done

09:48

the math since distance can't be negative we don't have

09:51

to change it to positive easy enough that makes our

09:54

average speed for this part eight point three three meters

09:56

per second now let's go to the displacement for the

09:58

whole trip displacement equals the final displacement minus the starting

10:02

replacement pretty simple our final taco based displacement was two

10:07

kilometers in the positive direction starting displacement a big fat

10:10

zero but we still want to work in terms of

10:12

meters so we've got two thousand meters on her hands

10:15

or to put it scientifically to point zero zero times

10:18

ten to the third meter's distance involves a little more

10:21

attention because we've got to account for all the ground

10:24

we covered So at the start we went five kilometers

10:26

west and we ended up with two kilometers to the

10:29

east of our starting point meaning the second part of

10:32

our trip covered seven kilometers adding it up we find

10:35

a total distance of twelve kilometers also known as one

10:38

point two zero times ten to the fourth meters using

10:42

the right amount of sig six that's a big difference

10:44

from the displacement isn't it We're moving right along here

10:47

huh We might not even have time for a second

10:50

Round of taco goodness let's calculate the average velocity for

10:53

our trip We said the total displacement was two thousand

10:56

meters now we need the total time The second part

10:59

of the trip took twelve minutes which is seven hundred

11:01

twenty seconds Add that to the six hundred seconds the

11:04

first leg took us on Our total travel time was

11:07

one thousand three hundred twenty seconds Divide displacement by time

11:11

and we have an average velocity of one point five

11:13

two meters per second The equation for speed is total

11:17

distance divided by time A total distance Twelve thousand meters

11:21

total time is still one thousand three hundred twenty seconds

11:24

Do the division and we get an average speed of

11:26

nine point zero Nine meters per second huh Our speed

11:30

is a lot more impressive than our velocity So even

11:32

though the two words might mean the same thing in

11:35

the non physics world when it comes to science speed

11:37

and velocity can be very different As we worked on

11:40

this problem you saw that we had to convert units

11:43

Luckily a lot of the conversion was kilometers two meters

11:46

conversion in the metric system is super easy because it's

11:49

usually just a matter of changing the order of magnitude

11:52

but in america we still use the imperial system most

11:55

of the time which is a little bit less intuitive

11:58

Twelve inches in a foot five thousand two hundred eighty

12:00

feet in the mile Nothing intuitive about that at all

12:04

It's like a bunch of old english guys just threw

12:06

darts at some numbers to come up with these measurements

12:09

Yeah that story about a king using his foot to

12:11

come up with the measurement for an official foot old

12:14

wives tale Not really So we need a more intuitive

12:17

way to handle these conversions One way to help ourselves

12:19

out is by using a grid let's say we want

12:21

to convert twenty five miles per hour two meters per

12:24

second The first part of our grid will look like

12:26

this We're going to be using multiplication and division in

12:29

this process so we'll put the things we multiply on

12:32

top of the grit and the things we're going to

12:34

divide on the bottom So let's focus on the our

12:37

unit because we're going to be dividing that bad boy

12:40

The first step to get two seconds is to divide

12:43

An hour in two minutes will add a new section

12:46

to our grid and put one hour on top and

12:48

sixty seconds on the bottom Then we'll attack more to

12:51

the grid and split a minute into sixty seconds Okay

12:55

so we've got into one of the units we need

12:57

to do this Conversions let's go after meters now there's

13:00

about one point six kilometers for each mile we'll throw

13:04

that onto the grid also Now we just have to

13:06

break up a kilometer and two meters and there are

13:09

precisely one thousand meters in each kilometre looking at our

13:13

grid it looks like one big division problem We've got

13:16

our dividend on top and our divisor on the bottom

13:19

So how about we put together an equation We'll apply

13:22

all the numbers on the top and multiply all the

13:25

numbers on the bottom leading us with forty thousand meters

13:28

on top and three thousand six hundred seconds on the

13:31

bottom Doing that last piece of division we find that

13:34

twenty five miles per hour equals eleven point one meters

13:37

per second We do have to take the conversion step

13:39

by step and step by step would probably convert about

13:42

half a meter per second Sorry i want to get

13:45

started with the conversion stuff It can be pretty hard

13:47

to stop So just remember speed and velocity Make sure

13:50

you're choosing the right one for whichever problem you're trying

13:52

to solve just like distance and displacement speed and velocity

13:55

related But they're not the same Kind of like you

13:58

and your family except for that one year and there 00:14:02.064 --> [endTime] is no way you share any dna with her

Up Next

Jane Eyre Summary
123033 Views

When you're about to marry the love of your life, not many things could stop you. However, finding out that your future hubby is keeping his crazy...

Related Videos

What is Shmoop?
91404 Views

Here at Shmoop, we work for kids, not just the bottom line. Founded by David Siminoff and his wife Ellen Siminoff, Shmoop was originally conceived...

ACT Math 4.5 Elementary Algebra
492 Views

ACT Math: Elementary Algebra Drill 4, Problem 5. What is the solution to the problem shown?

AP English Literature and Composition 1.1 Passage Drill 1
1039 Views

AP® English Literature and Composition Passage Drill 1, Problem 1. Which literary device is used in lines 31 to 37?

AP English Literature and Composition 1.1 Passage Drill 2
683 Views

AP® English Literature and Composition Passage Drill 2, Problem 1. What claim does Bacon make that contradicts the maxim "Whatsoever is delig...