Is it possible for speed to be constant while acceleration is not zero? Give an example of such a situation.

Short Answer

Expert verified

Yes, it is possible in the case of uniform circular motion.

Step by step solution

01

Velocity and Acceleration

Keep in mind that speed and velocity are not interchangeable terms. Because velocity is a vector, it has a magnitude as well as a direction. The magnitude element of the velocity is called speed.

The change in velocity over time is referred to as acceleration.

There will be an acceleration if the magnitude (speed) or direction (direction) of the velocity changes.

02

Example where speed is constant, but acceleration is non-zero

An object traveling in a uniform circular motion would have a constant speed and centripetal acceleration (directed toward the center of the circle). Still, its velocity would not be constant since the object's motion direction is changing.

An item thrown straight up is another example. At the peak of its motion, it would have zero speed (the magnitude of the velocity is 0), but the change in velocity is not zero since the object's motion shifts from upward to downward.

Hence there are cases in which even speed is constant, but acceleration is possible only because of the direction component.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

A swan on a lake gets airborne by flapping its wings and running on top of the water.

(a) If the swan must reach a velocity of6.00 m/s to take off and it accelerates from rest at an average rate of 0.350 m/s2, how far will it travel before becoming airborne?

(b) How long does this take?

A steel ball is dropped onto a hard floor from a height of 1.50 m and rebounds to a height of 1.45 m. (a) Calculate its velocity just before it strikes the floor. (b) Calculate its velocity just after it leaves the floor on its way back up. (c) Calculate its acceleration during contact with the floor if that contact lasts 0.0800 ms (\({\bf{8}}{\bf{.00 \times 1}}{{\bf{0}}^{{\bf{ - 5}}}}\;{\bf{s}}\)) . (d) How much did the ball compress during its collision with the floor, assuming the floor is absolutely rigid?

In World War II, there were several reported cases of airmen who jumped from their flaming airplanes with no parachute to escape certain death. Some fell about 20,000 feet (6000m), and some of them survived, with few life-threatening injuries. For these lucky pilots, the tree branches and snow drifts on the ground allowed their deceleration to be relatively small. If we assume that a pilot’s speed upon impact was 123 mph (54 m/s), then what was his deceleration? Assume that the trees and snow stopped him over a distance of3.0m.

Consider a grey squirrel falling out of a tree to the ground.

(a) If we ignore air resistance in this case (only for the sake of this problem), determine a squirrel’s velocity just before hitting the ground, assuming it fell from a height of 3.0 m.

(b) If the squirrel stops in a distance of 2.0 cmthrough bending its limbs, compare its deceleration with that of the airman in the previous problem.

(a) Explain how you can determine the acceleration over time from a velocity versus time graph such as the one in Figure 2.56.

(b) Based on the graph, how does acceleration change over time?

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