How to find the speed of a moving object: to find the speed, we need to find the distance of which the car traveled and the time taken for the car to travel the certain distance. The formula we use to calculate speed is: Distance/Time.
During period one on Tuesday, we worked in groups to calculate the speed of the cars traveling through Carmen Rd. First we measured between two lamp posts, which gave us the distance of 50m. Then we waited for vehicle to pass through one lamp post to start the timer and stop it when the vehicle passed through the second lamp post. We did so for 10 cars and started to find the speed.
This is where we used the formula for speed, which is distance/time and calculated the speed to get a conclusion as an end result.
An example of the calculations we did: 50m/4.35s = 11.5m s-1 (m s-1 is the unit used for speed), we then converted the speed in to km hr-1 (km per hour) by multiplying the answer - 11.5m s-1 - by 3.6. The answer in km hr-1 was 41.4km hr-1 - which is below the speed limit as the speed limit for Carmen Rd is 50km.
Results: As part of the experiment, we had to write a conclusion to describe the results. The question, which assumed that the cars are traveling too fast, was proven wrong as none of the cars were over speeding. The average speed of 10 cars traveling through Carmen Rd was 42.84km hr-1, which is below the speed limit.
But we can't say that our method of measuring the speed was the best. We could've improved the results by having people standing beside both of the lamp posts and indicate when a vehicle has passed through one. This would help us get a more accurate time to work with.
The other reason why the vehicles weren't moving fast was because of the traffic lights, which were right beside the 50m we chose to measure.
