You've probably noticed that when you're in a car or on a bus, sometimes the vehicle goes faster and at other times it goes slower, right?
This means that the speed at which the vehicle travels is not the same throughout the journey, it varies. Thus, on a single route we have different speeds. Let's check how to calculate the average speedof a vehicle?
Average speed formula
Average speed is the division between the distance traveled by the vehicle and the time spent on the entire route. The formula to calculate is:
Example: A car covered a distance of 450 km in 6 hours. What was the car's average speed on that route?
This means that, on average, the car covered 75 km every hour of travel.
How does the speedometer work?
O speedometer is an instrument that measures the instantaneous speed of a moving body. In a vehicle, it marks the different speeds reached while the car is moving.
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If you look at the car's speedometer while traveling, you will see that the position of the pointer changes each time the car speeds up or slows down.
How the speedometer measures the speed of a car?
First we need to know that a speedometer can be digital, on newer cars, or mechanical, on older models.
digital speedometer
The car's engine turns create electrical pulses and these pulses are counted by a sensor. The greater the number of pulses, the faster the vehicle is.
A kind of microcomputer in the car translates these pulsations, producing information on the speed reached by the car.
mechanical speedometer
The turning of the car's wheels are transmitted to a magnet connected to the speedometer. This causes this magnet to rotate also creating a magnetism that makes the speedometer hand move. The faster the magnet rotates, the faster the car is.
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