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In contrast to an average velocity, referring to the overall motion in a finite time interval, the instantaneous velocity of an object describes the state of motion at a specific point in time. It is defined by letting the length of the time interval Δ t {\displaystyle \Delta t} tend to zero, that is, the velocity is the time derivative of the ...
There are two main descriptions of motion: dynamics and kinematics.Dynamics is general, since the momenta, forces and energy of the particles are taken into account. In this instance, sometimes the term dynamics refers to the differential equations that the system satisfies (e.g., Newton's second law or Euler–Lagrange equations), and sometimes to the solutions to those equations.
Since the velocity of the object is the derivative of the position graph, the area under the line in the velocity vs. time graph is the displacement of the object. (Velocity is on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. Multiplying the velocity by the time, the time cancels out, and only displacement remains.)
A positive average velocity means that the position coordinate increases over the interval in question, a negative average velocity indicates a net decrease over that interval, and an average velocity of zero means that the body ends the time interval in the same place as it began.
Displacement is the shift in location when an object in motion changes from one position to another. [2] For motion over a given interval of time, the displacement divided by the length of the time interval defines the average velocity (a vector), whose magnitude is the average speed (a scalar quantity).
In terms of a displacement-time (x vs. t) graph, the instantaneous velocity (or, simply, velocity) can be thought of as the slope of the tangent line to the curve at any point, and the average velocity as the slope of the secant line between two points with t coordinates equal to the boundaries of the time period for the average velocity.
In statistical mechanics, the mean squared displacement (MSD, also mean square displacement, average squared displacement, or mean square fluctuation) is a measure of the deviation of the position of a particle with respect to a reference position over time.
In physics, drift velocity is the average velocity attained by charged particles, such as electrons, in a material due to an electric field. In general, an electron in a conductor will propagate randomly at the Fermi velocity, resulting in an average velocity of zero. Applying an electric field adds to this random motion a small net flow in one ...