What’s the difference between Speed and Velocity?
Well, Velocity measures the rate of change and is a vector quantity.
That means it has direction and magnitude.
Whereas, Speed is just magnitude with no particular direction.
In fact, Speed is just the magnitude of the Velocity vector!
In this lesson, we are going to use our knowledge of Vectors and Triangles to help us calculate Airspeed and Groundspeed for an airplane.
What we see first is that the Groundspeed is represented by the vector sum of the Windspeed and Airspeed, as NASA, points out.
Oh yeah, that just means we’re going to add two vectors to get our resultant vector.
Airspeed and Groundspeed Representation
But, more importantly, a plane’s Groundspeed is the Course of the plane, and a plane’s Airspeed is referred to as it’s Heading.
We are going to look at three classic questions, where we will need SOH-CAH-TOA, the Law of Sines, and the Law of Cosines, along with our knowledge of Parallel Lines from Geometry, to find a plane’s Bearing, Airspeed, and Groundspeed.
Velocity Vector – Video
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