Okay, so the other day I was messing around with this idea of a sports car moving at a constant velocity. It got me thinking about all those physics problems we used to do in school, and I wanted to see if I could actually make it happen, you know, like a little experiment.
First things first, I needed to find some data to work with. After digging around online, I came across this example where a sports car travels 120 meters in 5 seconds at a constant velocity. That sounded pretty good, so I decided to go with that. The example also said the car then brakes and comes to a stop in 4 seconds. I figure that was important, too, so I made a note of it.
Next, I started thinking about how to actually show this happening. I’m no physicist, but I do like to play around with a simple simulator. The problem was simulating constant velocity. From what I recall, constant velocity means no change in speed or direction. So, I set up the car in the simulator to move in a straight line and made sure the speed stayed the same throughout the first part of the experiment. The value used was 24m/s as I discovered through a simple calculation using the formula v=d/t which means 120m divided by 5.0s. It comes to 24m/s.
- Set the car’s initial position.
- Set the car’s velocity to a constant value (e.g., 24 m/s, based on the example I found).
- Set the car to move in a straight line.
Then, I ran the simulation. The car moved across the screen, covering the 120 meters in 5 seconds, just like the example said. It was actually pretty cool to see it working. I was pretty chuffed with myself, to be honest.
Now for the braking part. I set the simulation to start braking the car after the initial 5 seconds. I made sure it decelerated uniformly until it came to a complete stop in 4 seconds. That was a bit trickier to get right, but after a few tries, I managed it.
My simple code used to calculate
- Initial velocity: v = d / t = 120 m / 5.0 s = 24 m/s
- Set velocity to 24 m/s for the first 5 seconds.
- Apply brakes, reducing velocity to 0 m/s over 4 seconds.
Once I got both parts of the simulation working, I played it a few times. It was satisfying to see the car move at a constant velocity and then smoothly come to a stop. It felt like I had actually accomplished something, even if it was just a simple simulation. I just wanted to share this little project of mine. It wasn’t anything groundbreaking, but it was fun to do and it helped me brush up on some basic physics concepts. Maybe I’ll try something a bit more complicated next time, who knows!
