relative velocity
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Tag archives for relative velocity
MythBusters – velocity is relative
Posted by Rhett Allain on April 9, 2010 So, I complained about MythBuster’s explanation of relative velocity. How would I explain this? I would start by saying that velocity is relative. Here is the definition for velocity: I put the “avg” in there because it is more true. If the acceleration is zero, I could drop this. For the rest of this post,…
MythBusters and physics terms
Posted by Rhett Allain on April 8, 2010 In the last episode of MythBusters, they tried to reproduce the following experiment. Suppose you are driving in a car at 60 mph and you shoot a ball backwards at 60 mph (with respect to the car). Will the ball just drop (with respect to the ground)? Actually, it is a cool demo – I…
Basics: Relative Velocity
Posted by Rhett Allain on September 24, 2008 **pre reqs:** [Vectors and Vector Addition](http://scienceblogs.com/dotphysics/2008/09/basics-vectors-and-vector-addition.php) This was sent in as a request. I try to please, so here it is. The topic is something that comes up in introductory physics – although I am not sure why. There are many more important things to worry about. Let me start with an example. Suppose you…