Motion

Part 3

Describe motion in two dimensions.

For The Interested Reader

For The Interested Reader

If you want to talk about negative time or distance, you certainly can. It simply indicates a time or position prior to the starting coordinates.

For example, if I decide to start counting time from when I wake up at 6:00am, I would say that .

If my cat woke me up at 5:30am I could say she woke me up at .

And then I would have a word with my cat about respecting people's sleep schedules. ... ...

Which would go absolutely nowhere, because she's a cat.

Projectile motion refers to the motion of an object in two dimensions. Think about throwing a baseball to your friend. As the ball arcs through the air along its two-dimensional path, it has motion in the x-direction and the y-direction—these are the components of its motion. The first step to analyzing the ball's trajectory is to set up a coordinate system.

Motion Along A Straight Line

Suppose you roll a ball along a very smooth floor. Its motion is one-dimensional along the x-axis. If you throw the ball straight up in the air, its motion is one-dimensional along the y-axis.

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