Kinematics Equations - but with speed.

[Lifeman]

For the 4 kinematics equations, can you insert speed instead of velocity and distance instead of displacement for all of them? I know for the Displacement=V,avg x time you can make that Distance=Speed,avg x time but how about for the others?

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[milski]

Not really. You can find cases where this works but it is not correct in general. The biggest issue is that speed is a scalar and velocity is a vector. Any time when you have changes in the direction of the velocity, you will run into troubles.

 

[Lifeman]

Ah, so in my original post, it should have been distance=speed x time, instead of average speed? We don't deal with acceleration with speed?

 

[milski]

Ah, so in my original post, it should have been distance=speed x time, instead of average speed? We don't deal with acceleration with speed?

No, your initial equation seems fine. Distance=speed x time is just a specific case where speed=const=average speed.

The problem is that you don't have a scalar replacement for acceleration, so you cannot write similar versions of the equations in a participates.