Measuring Walking Speed

Most recent answer: 04/11/2013

Q:
how can one measure the average time taken by someone in walking a distance of 1m
- winfrey (age 15)
embu,kenya
A:
Hello Winfrey
A typical walking speed is of the order of one meter per second. If you use a stopwatch timer to measure the time for one meter there will be an error of a few percent since the reaction time of turning on and off the time is probably a tenth of a second or so. If you want to measure it more accurately you should use a 10 meter length and then divide your answer by 10 ... and so on.   The start-stop timing error will be reduced in proportion to the total time.

LeeH

(published on 04/11/2013)