acceleration

Simple Harmonic Motion Graphs

Here’s my attempt at animating 5 graphs for simple harmonic motion together in one page.

From left column:

$$v = \pm\omega\sqrt{x_o^2-x^2}$$

$$a = -\omega^2x$$

From right column:

$$s = x_o\sin(\omega t)$$

$$v = x_o\omega \cos(\omega t)$$

$$a = -x_o\omega^2 \sin(\omega t)$$

And here is the animated gif file for powerpoint users:

Simple harmonic motion graphs - displacement-, velocity-, acceleration- time graphs and more

Geogebra App for Kinematics

As one of the first topics in A-level physics, kinematics introduces JC students to the variation of velocity and displacement with acceleration. Very often, they struggle with the graphical representations of the 3 variables.

This Geogebra app allows students to vary acceleration (keeping it to a linear function for simplicity) while observing changes to velocity and displacement. Students can also change the initial conditions of velocity and displacement.

The default setting shows an object being thrown upwards with downward gravitational acceleration of 10 m s-2.

The movement of the particle with time is shown on the left with a reference line showing the position on the displacement graph.

GeoGebra link: https://www.geogebra.org/m/qpxcs6vb