Final answer:
Deceleration describes the rate at which a car slows down, relative position denotes location compared to one's home, and velocity specifies speed and direction. A car's odometer measures total distance, while a speedometer shows instantaneous speed.
Step-by-step explanation:
The term that describes how quickly a car is slowing down to a stop is deceleration or negative acceleration. When determining your location relative to your home, the term used is relative position or simply position. Lastly, the term that describes how fast and in which direction you are traveling is velocity.
It's important to understand that a car's odometer measures the total distance traveled, not the displacement, while a car's speedometer measures its instantaneous speed, not velocity. A car may travel at varying speeds throughout a trip; thus, when the total distance from its odometer is divided by the travel time, we get the average speed, which differs from the magnitude of average velocity in that it does not consider the direction of travel.
When a car stops, the time, distance traveled, and initial velocity can help us determine if the deceleration values are reasonable given the context of the stop. Deceleration can be further explored by measuring the car's initial velocity and the time it takes to stop, which can give a sense of the car's braking deceleration in more relatable terms, such as meters per second squared.