and acceleration = velocity change ÷ time. To find the distance travelled, look at the area under the graph. In the first 10 seconds this is the area of the triangle, ½ × 10 s × 40 m/s = 200 m.

Since the average acceleration is defined as: The slope of the velocity-time graph is the average acceleration. You can see the fitting equation gives an average acceleration of 6 x 10 4 m/s 2.

Key fact The gradient of speed-time and velocity-time graphs represent acceleration. The area under a speed-time graph represents the distance travelled. The object is accelerating at \(\frac{8}{ ...