Education Technology


Calculus: Elevator: Height and Velocity

by Texas Instruments

Objectives

  • Work with linked graphical and physical representations of the vertical motion of an elevator

About the Lesson

These TI-Nspire documents are based on the context of the rectilinear (straight line) vertical motion of an elevator. The motion of an elevator is a particularly nice context for introducing ideas related to rectilinear motion (position, velocity, speed, acceleration, etc.) because the connection to the vertical coordinate of related graphs is more natural and does not require the additional mental work of representing functions depicting horizontal motion (for example, of a car). The Elevator_Height_and_Velocity TI-Nspire documents allow the user to provide a height function h to “drive” the motion of an elevator. The document produces a corresponding velocity function by differentiating the given height position function. The height function drives the motion of the elevator as the user advances the value of time t via a slider.