Question

HELP ??? Describe what it means to view something from a frame of reference. Give an example to illustrate your explanatio

Answer 1

Hi! Do you have any idea where to start?

Answer 2

There are lots of other people who have asked this before, so you can Google search it! You can even type "site:openstudy.com" to restrict the search results to only this site!

That said... A frame of reference is...
Well, do you know what people mean when they say reference point? It's a point, and you use it to compare anything.

Like.... Say you're standing in a room with many people. You want to compare the location of your feet on the ground. Now say you want everyone (including yourself) to be able to describe how far their feet are from the wall. You're closer, you might be 5 ft. Someone else is farther, they might be 15 ft. But you're all measuring from the wall and can describe your feet position. The wall - and this is important - is 0 ft. It is the reference.
In this example, say you change the reference. Say you measure from a different wall. Now, now everything changes. Just a different frame of reference.

Now that stuff isn't what we care about so much in the physics where you learn this stuff. The position reference isn't an issue. What is an issue, however, (and the teachers make a big deal of it, as they should) is velocity reference.

Let's work with that velocity reference thing. So, a car is driving down the freeway, 60 miles per hour. Compared to itself (using itself as the reference), it is at rest (0 miles per hour).

Make sense? If not, think about it. Once you got it, try this:
Now there are TWO cars on the freeway. Both 60 miles per hour. The car in back uses the car in front as a reference (for everything including velocity). Now, this car in back measures it's velocity to be (with respect to the car in front)........ *drumroll* ZERO! Still at rest. It's measuring from the front car, like you measure your feet from the wall.

If that back car now compares its velocity to the road, it's like you switching to referencing a new wall. It's just slightly more intense because it's velocity instead of position. That back car now considers itself to be going 60 miles per hour, measuring compared to the road.

One more, and you can explain this as your example or ask for help on it.
There are those two cars on the free way. Now, the back one speeds up to 70 miles per hour.
\(\quad\bullet\) It compares its velocity to the car in front of it going 60 miles per hour.
\(\quad\bullet\) So it says that that front car is going 0 miles per hour. That is the reference. What is the back car's velocity with this reference?

The reference point defines the reference frame. The reference frame is how you define what everything is doing.