Question

We timed how long it took for the ball to travel 1 meter several times, so we could calculate an “average” time to use in the velocity calculation. In the following set of times, (2.26s, 2.38s, 3.02s, 2.26s, 2.31s), the value 3.02s is considered an ___________ and is not used in the calculation.

Answer 1

We need to find the average speed of the ball during the motion of 1 m

In order to find that we took several reading and found following times to cover the distance of 1 m

t1 = 2.26 s

t2 = 2.38 s

t3 = 3.02 s

t4 = 2.26 s

t5 = 2.31 s

Now in order to find the average time we can write

$T_{mean} = \frac{t_1 + t_2 + t_3 + t_4 + t_5}{5}$

$T_{mean} = \frac{2.26 + 2.38 + 3.02 + 2.26 + 2.31}{5}$

$T_{mean} = 2.45 s$

So average time to cover the distance of 1 m by ball will be 2.45 s

here 3.02 s is not the average time but we can say it is the median of the readings of all possible values which we can not use in our calculation as average time