How to work with Speed and Velocity

Light travels at around 300,000 km per second, or 186,411 miles per second. A light year is the distance light travels in one Earth year, so this would equate to 5,903,026,326,255 miles!! Quite a long way! If you could travel at the speed of light, you would never get any older! And you could go round the Earth 7.5 times in one second.

Neptune takes nearly 165 Earth years to orbit one time around the Sun! This is because it orbits really slowly, at only 3.37 miles per second. In comparison the Earth’s average orbital speed is around 19 miles per second. Since it was officially discovered in 1846, it has only completed one orbit of the Sun! However, it does have the fastest winds in the solar system. They can reach up to 1600 miles per hour! You would not want to be caught outside in those winds! In contrast, the most powerful hurricane in the world had a maximum wind speed of 215 miles per hour.

If you are studying GCSE Science, you need to know the difference between speed and velocity, and how to calculate them. Try our new “How to work with Speed and Velocity” guide. Included is an explanation of how to interpret distance/time graphs, and velocity/time graphs. There are examples of how to use the gradient to calculate speed or acceleration, and using the area under a graph to calculate distance travelled. Questions for you to try, and answers to check your understanding can also be found in the guide.