Translation motion

When the position change the motion is known as Translational motion. This category is very interesting when in this motion a change in location happen but an object can be moving and yet not go anywhere. Let’s understand with an example that a student get up in the morning and go to School, but by evening you will back at home back(same place) in the very same home where he started the day. Think is this translational motion or not? If the problem at hand is to determine how far you travel in a day, then there are two possible answers: either you have gone to School and back (10 km each way for a total of 20 km) or you have gone nowhere (10 km each way for a total of 0 km). The first answer invokes translational motion while the second invokes oscillatory motion . That we will study in further example.

Examples of Translatory motion

• A car or a train moving along a road.
• A ball rolling on the ground.
• A girl sliding down a slope.
• Pulling out a drawer of a table.
• Firing of a bullet from a gun
• A stone hurled from a sling or catapult.