1. The velocity is the rate of change of the particle's position over time. The average velocity is then the average rate of change of the particle's position. If
denotes the particle's position at time
, then its velocity at time
satisfies
. So to get the average velocity, we need to integrate:
which follows from the fundamental theorem of calculus. If
, then
We get an average velocity of
(in meters/second).
2. The instantaneous velocity can be found by simply evaluating the velocity function at the given time. We get
m/s. Speed is the same as velocity, but we don't account for direction, meaning we just take the magnitude, given by the absolute value of the velocity. So the particle's speed is
which is satisfied when both
and
are positive, or both are negative. This occurs when
or when
.
4. The particle is moving faster or slower when the rate of change of its velocity is positive or negative, respectively. So we have to check the derivative of
(the acceleration), find its critical points, then examine where the derivative changes sign.
a. When
, we have
, so the particle is speeding up.
b. When
, we have
, so the particle is slowing down.
5. The total distance traveled can be determined integrating the particle's speed function. When we do so, we're essentially chunking the total time interval into smaller subintervals, checking how much distance is traveled over each subinterval by multiplying the average speed over each subinterval by the length (duration) of each subinterval, and adding all these subdistances together.
So we compute:
In the analysis from part (3), we know
when
, so it must be non-negative elsewhere. What this means is we have
because
whenever
, and
whenever
. (This is just the definition of the absolute value function.)
Computing each integral, we get a total distance traveled of
meters.