You are consulting for an elevator company. During a safety test, technicians cr

Question

You are consulting for an elevator company. During a safety test, technicians created the following graph of the velocity of the elevator versus time; you have been asked to interpret the graph. Unfortunately, you are told that the technician who printed the graph has made two mistakes. The labeled interval on the velocity axis should be 2.3 m/s rather than 2.0 m/s, and the labeled time interval should be 3.6 s rather than 4.0 s. You should begin by redrawing the graph on your own paper with the proper labels on the velocity and time axes.

Explanation / Answer

Acceleration is the change in velocity / time. This will merely be the slope of the lines on your graph. Since you have apparently put the correct values on your graph you can fill in the details. Wherever you have a horizontal line on the graph the acceleration is zero. A line sloping upwards to the right is a positive acceleration and the downwards sloping lines are deceleration. This holds true for all portions of the graph since velocity is increasing in the upwards direction and the time is increasing to the right. You only need the slopes of the lines on the graph to get the acceleration.

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