Accumulating: from resultant force to displacement

Going all the way

In this episode you've concentrated on the relationships between the measures of motion, exploring the connections between acceleration, velocity and displacement.

• Acceleration accumulates velocity.
• Velocity accumulates displacement.

In the first episode you concentrated on the causes of motion – that is, what got things going and otherwise changed their motion: A resultant force causes a change in motion. These eight words imply a lot of understanding: the whole of the SPT: Forces topic and the whole of the SPT: Motion topic are needed to really understand the phrase. Physics may be simple but it is quite subtle.

• Force causes acceleration.
• Mass impedes acceleration.

Now we simply put the three together to get a very powerful synthesis: a way of building predictive models of the world that are very reliable guides to action.

• forcemass sets acceleration
• Acceleration accumulates velocity.
• Velocity accumulates displacement.