Can someone clarify some things for me?

[matt@USA]

I don't know if I am just looking too much into the problems or what, but I am having a very hard time determining what is what in the problems. I am not confident on what I pick as Vnaught, V, x, y, etc ... Will someone please help?
I will tell you how I determine it, and you can correct me.

x=where it lies on the x axis?
y=where it lies on the y axis? ... Both of these are determined by me? Correct?

So is V the velocity of the object? And what is Vnaught?

These are all pertaining to 2D equations.

 

[QuarkCharmer]

Naught is usually the initial value of something. If you have a position graph then you could say that x naught is the starting position of the object. You see subscripts used a great deal. i usually denotes an initial value as well, f usually means the final value. Aside from that everything else is pretty descriptive. When you are dealing with 2+d problems, you might see subscripts of x and y to let you know which component it is. Say you have a vector r, they might say that $a_{rx}$ is the acceleration of the x component of the r vector and so on.

 

[cepheid]

Yes, x and y are positions, measured along their respective coordinate axes.

v is velocity. In general it varies with time (i.e., pick a time t, and you'll get a specific value for v).

v0 is initial velocity (i.e. velocity at t = 0).

 

[matt@USA]

So what is V?

 

[PeterO]

So what is V?

In the context you have provided, V would be the velocity at the time to are dealing with.

V_o is the initial velocity. V is the velocity later.

eg: you might want to know "if a stone is thrown vertically down from the top of a 30m tower with a velocity of 2 ms^-1, how fast will it be traveling just before it hits the ground -[take g=10].

everything is happening downwards, so let down be positive.

V_o = 2.0
a = 10
x = 30
V = ??

Best formula to use would be

V² = V_o² + 2as

V² = 4 + 2x10x30 = 604

so V = 24.6