NCERT Class 9 Science Motion

MOTION

In everyday life, we see some objects at rest and others in motion. Birds fly, fish swim, blood flows through veins and arteries and cars move. Atoms, molecules, planets, stars and galaxies are all in motion. We often perceive an object to be in motion when its position changes with time. However, there are situations where the motion is inferred through indirect evidences. For example, we infer the motion of air by observing the movement of dust and the movement of leaves and branches of trees. What causes the phenomena of sunrise, sunset and changing of seasons? Is it due to the motion of the earth? If it is true, why don’t we directly perceive the motion of the earth?

An object may appear to be moving for one person and stationary for some other. For the passengers in a moving bus, the roadside trees appear to be moving backwards. A person standing on the road–side perceives the bus alongwith the passengers as moving. However, a passenger inside the bus sees his fellow passengers to be at rest. What do these observations indicate?

Most motions are complex. Some objects may move in a straight line, others may take a circular path. Some may rotate and a few others may vibrate. There may be situations involving a combination of these. In this chapter, we shall first learn to describe the motion of objects along a straight line. We shall also learn to express such motions through simple equations and graphs. Later, we shall discuss ways of describing circular motion.

8.1 Describing Motion

We describe the location of an object by specifying a reference point. Let us understand this by an example. Let us assume that a school in a village is 2 km north of the railway station. We have specified the position of the school with respect to the railway station. In this example, the railway station is the reference point. We could have also chosen other reference points according to our convenience. Therefore, to describe the position of an object we need to specify a reference point called the origin.

8.1.1 MOTION ALONG A STRAIGHT LINE

The simplest type of motion is the motion along a straight line. We shall first learn to describe this by an example. Consider the motion of an object moving along a straight path. The object starts its journey from  which is treated as its reference point (Fig. 8.1). Let A, B and C represent the position of the object at different instants. At first, the object moves through C and B and reaches A. Then it moves back along the same path and reaches C through B.

The total path length covered by the object is OA + AC, that is 60 km + 35 km = 95 km. This is the distance covered by the object. To describe distance we need to specify only the numerical value and not the direction of motion. There are certain quantities which are described by specifying only their numerical values. The numerical value of a physical quantity is its magnitude. From this example, can you find out the distance of the final position C of the object from the initial position O? This difference will give you the numerical value of the displacement of the object from O to C through A. The shortest distance measured from the initial to the final position of an object is known as the displacement. 

Can the magnitude of the displacement be equal to the distance travelled by an object? Consider the example given in (Fig. 8.1). For motion of the object from O to A, the distance covered is 60 km and the magnitude of displacement is also 60 km. During its motion from O to A and back to B, the distance covered = 60 km + 25 km = 85 km while the magnitude of displacement = 35 km. Thus, the magnitude of displacement (35 km) is not equal to the path length (85 km).

Further, we will notice that the magnitude of the displacement for a course of motion may be zero but the corresponding distance covered is not zero. If we consider the object to travel back to O, the final position concides with the initial position, and therefore, the displacement is zero. However, the distance covered in this journey is OA + AO = 60 km + 60 km = 120 km. Thus, two different physical quantities — the distance and displacement, are used to describe the overall motion of an object and to locate its final position with reference to its initial position at a given time.

Please refer to attached file for NCERT Class 9 Science Motion