Imagine a cart moving with constant velocity over a piece of paper. if the cart makes a mark directly beneath it on the paper at a regular time interval, in this case every 0.1 s, the marks would look like diagram a above. this is known as a “ticker tape” diagram of motion.
in the ticker tape diagram above, where does the cart have positive acceleration?
where does it have negative acceleration?
explain what features in diagram b you interpret as positive and negative acceleration.
if the dots were spaced widely apart in the diagram, then what could you infer about the speed of the cart?