The body is considered at two instants in time, one "initial" point and one "current". Often, problems in kinematics deal with more than two instants, and several applications of the equations are required.
The body's initial speed is denoted . Its current state is described by:
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Given initial speed u, one can calculate how high the ball will travel before it begins to fall.
The acceleration is normal gravity g. At this point one must remember that while these quantities appear to be scalars, the direction of displacement, speed and acceleration is important. They could in fact be considered as one-dimensional vectors. Choosing s to measure up from the ground, the acceleration a must be in fact -g, since the force of gravity acts downwards and therefore also the acceleration on the ball due to it.
At the highest point, the ball will be at rest: therefore v = 0. Using the 4th equation, we have:
More complex versions of these equations can include a quantity s0 for the initial position of the body, and v0 for u for consistency.
Examples
Many examples in kinematics involve projectiles, for example a ball thrown upwards into the air.
Substituting and cancelling minus signs gives:Extension
Note, however, that a suitable choice of origin for the one-dimensional axis on which the body moves renders this complication superfluous.Rotation
The analogues of the above equations can be written for rotation:
Here, is the angular acceleration, is the angular velocity and is the angular displacement; is the initial angular velocity and is the initial angular displacement.