Question

What is the speed at any instant of time known as ?

Answer 1

Hint: Speed and velocity have distinct meanings, just as distance and displacement do (despite their similarities). Speed is a scalar quantity that describes "how quickly an object moves."

Complete answer:
The distance traveled per unit of time is referred to as speed. It is the rate at which an object moves. The magnitude of the velocity vector is represented by the scalar quantity speed. It lacks a sense of direction. A higher speed indicates that an object is moving at a faster rate.A fast-moving object travels quickly and covers a large distance in a short period.

In comparison, a slow-moving object with a low speed travels a relatively short distance in the same amount of time. An object with no movement has a speed of zero. We know that the total distance traveled divided by the total time taken equals the average speed for a given time interval. As this time interval approaches zero, so does the distance traveled.

However, the limit of the distance-to-time ratio is non-zero, and this is referred to as the instantaneous speed. To put it another way, we can say that the instantaneous speed at any given time is the magnitude of instantaneous velocity at that time. Meter per second is the SI unit of instantaneous speed. It is a scalar value. Instantaneous velocity can be either linear or angular.

Hence, the speed at any instant of time is known as instantaneous speed.

Note: One way to look at it is that instantaneous speed provides more information about your journey, especially if your journey includes variable speeds. The more information you have about your journey, the smaller the time interval in which you measure.