Question

Brandon went to a Formula One car race and used his stopwatch to time how fast his favorite driver, Fernando Alonso, went around the 4.7-kilometer track. Brandon started the timer at the beginning of the second lap when the cars were already going fast. When he stopped the timer at the beginning of the third lap, one minute and three seconds had passed.

a. What was the average speed of Fernando Alonso, in kilometers per hour? What does it mean for this speed to be the “average”?
b. If you graphed the distance Fernando had traveled at the beginning of the lap and at the end of the lap, what would the coordinates of these points be? What would the - and -axes on this graph represent?
c. Find the equation of the line between these two points. What does this line represent?
d. If Fernando continues to average this speed, about how long do you think it would take him to finish the entire race? The race is 500 km.

Answer 1

A). To calculate the speed you use the formula V=d/t so V is the speed/velocity, d is distance and t is time. We also need to convert the time into hours so V would be (4.7x3600)/63 which would give you 268.57km/h. The meaning of average speed is how calculating the highest and lowest speed and seeing how fast he was going on average, it’s not necessarily the speed at which he was going all the time.