Question

If the average speed of a person was 1.2 meters/second, does this mean that their speed was exactly 1.2 meters/second the whole time? Is the average speed related to the maximum or minimum of the person? Explain why do you think so.

Answer 1

Average speed is defined by the following formula

$v = \frac{D}{t}$

here

D = total distance that an object move from its initial position to final position

t = total time of the motion

so here we will say that there is no such relation between initial or final speed or we can say maximum or minimum speed of object with average speed of object.

We only need to find the total distance and total time of motion in order to find the average speed

here we can see many examples like let say an object moves with speed v1 for time t1 and then with speed v2 for time t2 then here average speed is given as

$d = v_1 t_1 + v_2t_2$

since we know that distance covered is product of speed and time

that's why we used above equation for finding total distance

now the average speed will be

$v_{avg} = \frac{v_1t_1 + v_2 t_2}{t_1 + t_2}$

so this is how we can find the average speed for above motion

so average speed is always between maximum and minimum speed any value in-between.

It is neither the maximum value nor it is minimum value