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Concept

Speed

Speed
Frank Schulenburg · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Overview

In kinematics, the speed of a moving object is the rate at which the distance travelled by the object changes with time. The average speed of an object in an interval of time is the distance travelled by the object divided by the duration of the interval; the instantaneous speed is the limit of the average speed as the duration of the time interval approaches zero. Speed is the magnitude of velocity (a vector), which indicates additionally the direction of motion.

Speed has the dimensions of distance divided by time. The SI unit of speed is the metre per second (m/s). The kilometre per hour (km/h) or, in the US and the UK, miles per hour (mph), are also used as units of speed. For air and marine travel, the knot is commonly used.

The fastest possible speed at which energy or information can travel, according to special relativity, is the speed of light in vacuum c = 299792458 metres per second (approximately 1079000000 km/h or 671000000 mph). Matter cannot reach the speed of light, as this would require an infinite amount of energy. In relativity physics, the concept of rapidity replaces the classical idea of speed.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

  1. One cannot have full-screen, full-color images with lossless compression; one must compress them or use a lower resolution. For megabyte-size images, anything slower than a T-1 speed is impractical. For example, on a fifty-six-kilobaud line, it takes three minutes to transfer a one-megabyte file, if it is not compressed; and this speed assumes ideal circumstances (no other user contending for network bandwidth)…

    Library of Congress, Workshop on Electronic Texts

    States what Speed is; names Speed several times.

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  2. If the boat is increasing its speed very rapidly, the weight will seem to an observer in the cabin to fall in a curve directed towards the stern; if the speed is being rapidly diminished, the curve will be directed towards the bow. All these facts are familiar, and they led Galileo and Newton to regard an accelerated motion as something radically different, in its own nature, from a uniform motion.

    Bertrand Russell, The A B C of Relativity

    States what Speed is; names Speed twice.

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  3. Enter Valentine and Speed. SPEED. Sir, your glove. VALENTINE. Not mine. My gloves are on. SPEED. Why, then, this may be yours, for this is but one. VALENTINE. Ha? Let me see. Ay, give it me, it’s mine. Sweet ornament that decks a thing divine! Ah, Silvia, Silvia! SPEED. [_Calling_.] Madam Silvia! Madam Silvia! VALENTINE. How now, sirrah? SPEED.

    William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

    Names Speed several times; opens on Speed.

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Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of History of philosophy in Poland.

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