That's unusual. I guess your teacher is trying to make you think a bit. It's a good mental exercise, though. You may recall that the units of acceleration are meters per second squared. That gives you a clue right there. And if you knew Calculus, you'd know that acceleration is the second derivative of distance, s, with respect to time, t: d2s/dt2. So, by now you're probably getting the feeling that the slope of a distance-time squared graph has something to do with acceleration. And you'd be right. Just as the slope of a velocity-time graph is acceleration, the slope of a distance-t2 graph is acceleration. Well, not quite. It's actually ONE HALF the acceleration.
Chat with our AI personalities
The slope of a distance-time graph represents speed.
Since distance is 1/2 at^2 where a is acceleration, it represents one half of the acceleration
instantaneous magnitude of velocity
The slope of the curve at each point on thegraph is the speed at that point in time. (Not velocity.)
The speed. Also, if a positive slope represents the speed in one direction, the negative slope is the speed in the opposite direction.