Average Speed

Motion is included in almost every action of our every day lives. A bus driving to school, someone walking to class, and a ball rolling down a hill are all examples of objects in motion. Motion can be described as the process of changing place or position, and objects can move from one to position to another at varying speeds. A car driving down the freeway will have a much faster speed than a child riding their bike to school. These speeds can be measured and averaged so that we may solve for how fast the object was moving, how far the object traveled, as well as how long it took the object to get there. These elements are known as average speed, distance and time.

Imagine that you have just graduated high school and you and your friends are preparing to celebrate by going on a road trip throughout the state. However, your parents are nervous about you driving so much. Therefore, they are only permitting you to go on your road trip if you inform them of how much time you estimate you and your friends will spend driving, how many miles you will be putting on the car, and an average of how fast you will be driving.  This means that you must calculate the distance between each point of interest, the average speed you will be driving between each point, and the total time you estimate your trip will take.

In order to make all these calculations, you must first understand what average speed is, and how it is related to distance and time.