Final answer:
To determine the speed of travel to a new food source, distance and time are required to calculate speed. Tools such as a stopwatch and a measuring tape can be used to obtain these measurements. The average speed is obtained by dividing total distance traveled by the total time taken.
Step-by-step explanation:
To determine the speed of travel required to get to a new food source, you would need to know the distance to the target and the time it takes to reach it. Speed is calculated using the relationship speed = distance / time. When designing tools to measure speed, one could use a stopwatch to measure time and a measuring tape to record distance. For reliability, it's essential to calculate the percent uncertainty in both the distance and the time to understand how precise the measurements and the resulting speed calculation are.
As for real-world applications, a car's odometer measures the total distance traveled, while a speedometer shows the instantaneous speed. When you divide the distance by the total time of travel, as shown by the odometer, you are calculating the average speed, which is the total distance covered divided by the total time taken. This is different from average velocity, which considers displacement (total change in position) rather than total distance.
To put speed into context, when someone is driving, jogging, or walking, or observing the motion of an ant, snail, or falling leaf, they can estimate their speeds by timing and measuring the distance then convert the units to meters per second (m/s) or miles per hour (mi/h). For instance, a leisurely walk may be around 1.5 m/s, which is approximately 3.4 mi/h.