Tortoise and Rabbit's race

Let's begin with the famous story of the race between a tortoise and a rabbit, that you might have heard. In the story, the rabbit runs faster and rests on the way while the tortoise runs with slower speed but moves continuously till it reaches the finish line. Finally slow and steady runner wins the race.

The graph below depicts the story of the race between a tortoise and a rabbit.

                                           

                                                             Graph 5.3: Rabbit and Tortoise Race

                                                       
To tell your friends how the rabbit and the tortoise compared over time when they were running, you need to know how to interpret the graph.

On the line segment AB in the graph, distances d₁ and d₂ correspond to times t₁ and t₂, which shows positon is changing with respect to time. That means line segment AB in graph represents motion.

Similary line segments CD and AE also represent motion. Now, you can see on the line segment BC, distance from origin d₃ corresponds to time t₃. Further, distance d₃ also corresponds to time t₄. For two different values of time, we have same value in distance. So for this segment of graph, position is not changing with time and this represents the state of rest.

Can you figure out which curve (ABCD or AED) corresponds to rabbit’ s motion and why? How did you figure this?