Forces & Motion

Part One (labs 1 - 7)

• STUDY these concepts because you will need to KNOW them, own them, understand them well in order to solve the problems on your test.   
• As you study them, review the relevant lab to remind yourself of the principle in use.
• LOOK for examples of these principles in action all around you over the course of the next few days.  When you see one happening, force your parent, sibling, friend, dog, cat, or invisible friend to listen to you teach them about it!  Permission to be annoying granted!  Teaching something to someone else has been proven to be one of the best methods of cementing a concept in your brain.

1. As the mass of a resting body increases, its tendency to remain at rest also increases.

2. As the mass of a moving body increases, its tendency to remain in motion also increases.

3. When distance traveled is marked with equal increments of time, the marks can be used to determine relative speed and motion. The most widely spaced marks track the fastest moving object because more distance was covered. Evenly spaced marks suggest that the object travels with uniform speed showing that an equal distance is covered in each unit of time.

4. When reading a line of best fit for a speed graph, points that don’t fall on the graph line (the slope) indicate that different distances were traveled in each equal interval of time, and therefore were periods that the object traveled slower or faster than the average speed (the average speed is shown by the line of best fit).

5. Steeper slopes on time vs. distance line graphs (a speed graph) indicate faster speeds.

6. A straight graph line of time vs. distance (a speed graph) implies uniform motion/constant speed.

7. A curved or non-straight graph line (on a speed graph) indicates non-uniform motion/changing speed. 

8. Speed = distance / time

9. Average speed is the total distance divided by total time.

10. Constant speed is a description of a steady, uniform rate where the distance traveled is equal in each equal increment of time.

11. All mass has inertia.

12. Inertia is the tendency to continue with current state of motion (this includes lack of motion, or rest).

13. Newton's First Law of Motion (version one - This is not the finalized version! This is just the beginning!)