Motion Concepts
14 concepts · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · 20 prerequisite connections
Motion is the foundation of physics — the study of how objects move through space over time. Starting with position and speed, students build up to velocity (which adds direction) and acceleration (how velocity changes). These ideas connect directly to everyday experience: a car speeding up on a highway, a ball thrown across a field, or a satellite orbiting the Earth. Understanding motion requires comfort with vectors and reference frames, which is why this family feeds into nearly every other physics topic.
This family view narrows the full physics map to one connected cluster. Read it from left to right: earlier nodes support later ones, and dense middle sections usually mark the concepts that hold the largest share of future work together.
Use the graph to plan review, then use the full concept list below to open precise pages for definitions, examples, formulas, and related guides.
Concept Dependency Graph
Concepts flow left to right, from foundational to advanced. Hover to highlight connections. Click any concept to learn more.
Connected Families
Motion concepts have 7 connections to other families.
All Motion Concepts
Position
The location of an object relative to a chosen reference point (origin), described using coordinates in a given reference frame.
Displacement
The change in position of an object, measured as the straight-line distance and direction from the starting point to the ending point.
Velocity
The rate of change of position with respect to time, including both magnitude and direction.
Speed
The rate at which an object covers distance over time, calculated as total distance divided by total time, always expressed as a non-negative scalar quantity.
Acceleration
The rate at which an object's velocity changes over time, measured in metres per second squared (m/s²).
Free Fall
Motion under gravity alone, with no air resistance — all objects in free fall accelerate at $g \approx 9.81$ m/s² regardless of mass.
Projectile Motion
Two-dimensional motion under gravity alone, where horizontal velocity is constant and vertical motion is uniformly accelerated — producing a parabolic path.
Circular Motion
Motion of an object along a circular path where the speed may be constant but the velocity is continuously changing direction, requiring a centripetal acceleration.
Reference Frame
A coordinate system attached to a particular observer that is used to describe the positions and motions of objects.
Vectors
Mathematical quantities that possess both a magnitude (size) and a direction, represented graphically as arrows.
Angular Velocity
The rate at which an object rotates about an axis, measured in radians per second, with a direction along the axis.
Average Speed
Average speed is the total distance traveled divided by the total time taken.
Instantaneous Speed
Instantaneous speed is the speed of an object at a particular moment in time.
Relative Velocity
Relative velocity is the velocity of one object as measured from the reference frame of another object.