Why does the car in Picture B accelerate?
Answers
Answer:
where is the picture bro??
Acceleration
Speed and Velocity
Acceleration
Centripetal Force Requirement
The Forbidden F-Word
Mathematics of Circular Motion
As mentioned earlier in Lesson 1, an object moving in uniform circular motion is moving in a circle with a uniform or constant speed. The velocity vector is constant in magnitude but changing in direction. Because the speed is constant for such a motion, many students have the misconception that there is no acceleration. "After all," they might say, "if I were driving a car in a circle at a constant speed of 20 mi/hr, then the speed is neither decreasing nor increasing; therefore there must not be an acceleration." At the center of this common student misconception is the wrong belief that acceleration has to do with speed and not with velocity. But the fact is that an accelerating object is an object that is changing its velocity. And since velocity is a vector that has both magnitude and direction, a change in either the magnitude or the direction constitutes a change in the velocity. For this reason, it can be safely concluded that an object moving in a circle at constant speed is indeed accelerating. It is accelerating because the direction of the velocity vector is changing.
Geometric Proof of Inward Acceleration
To understand this at a deeper level, we will have to combine the definition of acceleration with a review of some basic vector principles. Recall from Unit 1 of The Physics Classroom that acceleration as a quantity was defined as the rate at which the velocity of an object changes. As such, it is calculated using the following equation:
where vi represents the initial velocity and vf represents the final velocity after some time of t. The numerator of the equation is found by subtracting one vector (vi) from a second vector (vf). But the addition and subtraction of vectors from each other is done in a manner much different than the addition and subtraction of scalar quantities. Consider the case of an object moving in a circle about point C as shown in the diagram below. In a time of t seconds, the object has moved from point A to point B. In this time, the velocity has changed from vi to vf. The process of subtracting vi from vf is shown in the vector diagram; this process yields the change in velocity.
where vi represents the initial velocity and vf represents the final velocity after some time of t. The numerator of the equation is found by subtracting one vector (vi) from a second vector (vf). But the addition and subtraction of vectors from each other is done in a manner much different than the addition and subtraction of scalar quantities. Consider the case of an object moving in a circle about point C as shown in the diagram below. In a time of t seconds, the object has moved from point A to point B. In this time, the velocity has changed from vi to vf. The process of subtracting vi from vf is shown in the vector diagram; this process yields the change in velocity.
