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Physics: Scalars vs. Vectors 33 Views


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

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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

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