- #1
Bashyboy
- 1,421
- 5
Hi,
I was wondering if acceleration was a form of nonuniform speed?
I was wondering if acceleration was a form of nonuniform speed?
cjl said:Well...
Acceleration means nonuniform velocity. An object can have a uniform speed and still be accelerating (if it is following a curved path at a constant speed).
LostConjugate said:Changing your direction is actually just a decrease in speed in one orthogonal dimension and an increase in another however, so fundamentally it is non-uniform speed.
cjl said:Since speed is the magnitude of velocity, that isn't really the case.
LostConjugate said:Total speed is the magnitude of velocity. Acceleration is non-uniform speed in at least 1 spatial direction.
cjl said:You're trying to invoke direction, but by definition, speed is directionally independent. If you include directional information, you're talking about velocity, not speed.
Acceleration is the rate of change of an object's velocity over time. It is a vector quantity, meaning it has both magnitude and direction.
Speed refers to the rate at which an object is moving, while acceleration refers to the rate at which an object's speed is changing. In other words, acceleration measures the change in speed over time.
Nonuniform speed is when an object's speed changes at a non-constant rate. This means that the object is accelerating or decelerating, rather than moving at a constant speed.
No, acceleration can also occur when there is a change in direction, even if the speed remains constant. This is known as centripetal acceleration.
Acceleration is typically measured in meters per second squared (m/s²) or feet per second squared (ft/s²). It can be calculated by dividing the change in an object's velocity by the time it takes for that change to occur.