Question

In addition to speed, what else should we know in order to predict the position of a moving body.

Answer 1

The physical quantities which are involved in the rate of change of velocities all we need to correctly predict the position of the moving body. We can also write the formula of one of the equations from the laws of motion which gives distance covered.

Complete answer:
In the given question, we are supplied the following data:
We are given a moving body. A physical quantity called speed is associated with it.But we need to specify the position of the body almost accurately.To begin with, we know that a body has many associated physical quantities, which describes the scene completely.Let us proceed to do the solution:
We know, the position of a moving body is determined by one of the equations from the laws of motion, which is given by:
$S = ut + \dfrac{1}{2}a{t^2}$
Where,
$S$ indicates the distance moved by the body.
$u$ indicates the initial velocity of the body.
$t$ indicates the time required to cover the required distance.
$a$ indicates the acceleration of the moving body.
So, from the above equation it is very clear that to predict the position of a moving body, we will require direction, time and acceleration of the moving body.All these physical quantities will correctly specify the position of the moving body with great accuracy.

Additional information:
Acceleration is a physical quantity which tells us about the rate of change of velocity. Acceleration of a body is positive when the body is speeding up while the acceleration is negative when the body is slowing down.Velocity or speed is the rate of change of displacement of distance. Velocity is a vector quantity while speed is a scalar quantity.

Note: While answering this question, we should know that speed can’t alone define the position of the body. If a certain body is associated with speed alone, then it will continue to move along a straight path for infinite time. In that condition we will not get the exact position of the body.