Physics- Velocity-time graph help?
Ok so a ball falls from a height and bounces once. I have to draw the velocity time graph for it. My teacher showed me the correct answer, but I don't understand the part where the graph goes vertically up. Can anyone explain? Thanks in advance!
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When the ball bounces, the velocity reverses direction (If there is no energy lost in the bounce, the magnitude of the velocity in both directions is the same). On a graph, one of those velocities will be positive and the other negative. The change occurs very rapidly, so on a graph a positive value changes to a negative value (or vice versa) in a short space, so you have a vertical line between the two values.