Team: William Lee, Seoyoon Choi, Jeongmin Cho

Usain Bolts Instantaneous Speed Lab

Objective: To calculate the instantaneous speed of Usain Bolt at the moment he crosses the finish line, during his world record-winning race. Plan of Action: After plotting a position vs. time graph of Usain Bolts travel, we are planning to calculate the instantaneous speed of Bolt as he crosses the finish line by finding the slope of the tangent line that contains the point, in which he crosses the line. Process and Calculations: Position 0m 20m 40m 60m 80m 100m Time 0.0 seconds 3.0 seconds 4.5 seconds 6.3 seconds 7.8 seconds 9.58 seconds

20-meter mark (confirmed by comparing distance with that between 80m and 100m):

40-meter mark: Distance Markers

60-meter mark:

80-meter mark:

100-meter mark:

Calculations:

The actual velocity was 37.6 km/hr. % error: 40.46 km/hr- 37.6 km/hr / 37.6 km/hr = 0.076 = 7.6% the calculation is valid. Conclusion: Our team met the expectation of calculating Usain Bolts instantaneous velocity when he crosses the finish line by finding his speed for five different intervals and drawing a position vs. time graph. For each of the five intervals, the formula of delta distance over delta time can be used to find the velocity. For the instantaneous velocity at the finish line, which is represented by one given point in the graph at (9.58s, 100m), a tangent line is drawn to the graph. After identifying yellow markings from the video, we conducted research on standard track markings to find the distance between each of the markings. We validated our findings, that each marking represented a 20-meter interval, with a table of records from the race; the table showed at exactly what time each of the runners including Bolt crossed each of the 20-meter lines. The accuracy of our observation can also be validated with screenshots of the race, each showing Bolt crossing the marked lines and his time at the moment. Next, we used the secant lines of the graph to approximate the tangent curve that would determine the instantaneous velocity. The resulting velocity we found was very close to the officially measured velocity that was shown in the video.

Overall, we were able to conduct this lab successfully by using our knowledge of slope, velocity, and secant and tangent lines. We have determined Usain Bolts instantaneous velocity when he crosses the finish line, and we were able to validate our result with the official record shown in the video. Tie to Calculus: Instantaneous velocity in in essence the tangent line of the point on the exponential velocity-time graph. By getting the secant lines (average of the two points) of two velocities in the graph, we get closer to the the actual value of the tangent line; this leads us to the concept of differentiation, which is a mathematical method of calculating the tangent line of any given point on a graph.