Trip Graph Maker: Distance–Time and Speed–Time Graphs From the Legs of a Trip

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Opens on Chapter 3’s example: the walk to the bus: 0.6 miles in 12 minutes, a 3-minute wait, then 0.4 miles in 6 minutes.

Legs: distance and minutes, one leg a line miles then minutes; 0 miles = stopped

Load another example from the book

A curving graph

Distance formula feet; t in seconds

Up to t =

Enter your numbers, then press Work it out.

How it works

Each leg is a straight piece of the distance–time graph, and its steepness is the leg's speed: distance ÷ time (minutes ÷ 60 to get hours). A flat piece is a stop: the distance doesn't change, so the speed is zero. The speed–time graph draws the same trip as heights: each leg becomes a flat bar at its speed. When the distance graph curves upward, as d = 3t² does for a car pulling away, the distance covered in each second grows: the speed is rising. That changing steepness is what Part Two learns to measure at a single instant.

From the book, Chapter 3. The walk goes 3 mph, then 0, then 4: 1.0 mile in 21 minutes. Jonas climbs at 12 mph, descends at 30 and rides the flat at 20: 10 miles in 33 minutes. The car at 3t² covers 3, 12, 27 and 48 feet by seconds 1 to 4, gaining 3, 9, 15 and 21 feet a second. Every chapter and its calculator →

Numbers can be typed as 1,450, $38, 0.40, 12%, 1/6 or 2 3/8. Functions can be typed as 16t², 6 + 48t − 16t^2, 1000e^(0.05t) or √x; answers are rounded half up, the way the book rounds. Everything stays in your browser: no sign-up, nothing stored or sent.