Outdoor activity to learn quantities in kinematics while you are travelling from home to school / college and back!

Key Concepts

Distance, displacement, speed, velocity, time, average quantity, instantaneous quantity

Duration

Depends on your travel time. 5 days of trials for a better average.

Materials Required

Mobile with navigation apps (Google Maps, Mappls India, Ola, Uber, etc.), graph sheets, scale, pencil, eraser

Procedure

1. Launch the navigation app and set it to your destination (school/college).
2. Note down the distance and time indicated in the app. Note down the time from your watch. Note down the reading on the vehicle's odometer.
3. During your journey, at random or periodic intervals of time, note down the reading on the odometer and speedometer of the vehicle. Simultaneously note down speed, distance & time remaining as given in the navigation app.
4. Upon completion of the journey make a note of time elapsed and the final reading on the odometer.
5. Repeat this experiment for 5 to-and-fro trips to your school/college.
6. Using the data analyse:
   • Accuracy of the app in predicting time and distance
   • Is instantaneous speed same as the average speed for a journey?
   • Is the instantaneous speed given by the app same as the one given on the speedometer?
7. Think of any more analysis that can be done using this data.

Video Demonstration