Lesson Plan: Reaction Time Physics • First Year of Secondary School
This lesson plan includes the objectives, prerequisites, and exclusions of the lesson teaching students how to describe the effects of a person’s reaction time on the motion of objects that they interact with.
Objectives
Students will be able to
- recognize that longer reaction times correspond to greater stopping distances,
- recall that for a vehicle initially moving at a uniform velocity, a stopping distance can be separated into a thinking distance and braking distance,
- recognize that for a vehicle initially moving at a uniform velocity, a thinking distance is proportional to reaction time but a braking distance is independent of reaction time,
- recognize that for a vehicle initially moving at a uniform velocity, a thinking distance is proportional to the initial velocity but a braking distance is proportional to the square of the initial velocity,
- calculate thinking, braking, and stopping distances.
Prerequisites
Students should already be familiar with
- ,
- ,
- velocity–time and displacement–time graphs.
Exclusions
Students will not cover
- stopping distances for objects that are initially accelerating/decelerating in the direction of their velocity,
- different definitions of the term reaction time.
