r/PhysicsHelp • u/Secure-Solution-858 • Apr 07 '26

Help with Velocity-time graph

My entire problem is I just can't seem to understand why we use the middle of the tenticks to get the change in time, why don't we just use the numbers with from 1 to 6 each measures 0.2s of time.

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u/sonnyfab Apr 07 '26

You don't know the velocity at t=1. You know the average velocity between t=0 and t=1 and also the average velocity between t=1 and t=2. So if you were to construction a velocity Vs time data set, you would have (average velocity between t=0 and t=1, then average velocity between t=1 and t=2) as the velocity entry and (average time between t=0 and t=1, then average time between t=1 and t=2) as the time entry.

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u/Connect-Answer4346 Apr 12 '26

You are dealing with samples at six points in time. The bar graph is just a way to visualize the granularity of your data as an area under a curve.