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6 June, 18:18

Why is the motion of an athlete moving along the circular path with Constant speed considered to be an accelerated motion?

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  1. 6 June, 18:23
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    The speed is changing its direction all the time. There is an acceleration which changes the direction of the speed - that is called centripetal acceleration. Only uniform linear motions are considered to have no acceleration.

    This is the general formula for acceleration

    a = dv/dt

    When calculating dv, you should keep in mind the change in the velocity vector’s direction. You can easily see in a graph that with dt tending to 0 (so the length of the arc covered is also tending to 0), the difference between vectors Vf and V0 has a direction which is perpendicular to velocity (the shorter the arc, the closest the angle is to 90 degrees).

    There is a formula (which can be deducted from the previous formula) which allows you to calculate the acceleration:

    a = v^2/r

    Let’s talk about the units:

    v is in m/s

    r is in m

    so v^2/r

    is in (m/s) ^2/m = (m^2/s^2) / m = m/s^2

    which is the same unit as dv/dt:

    dv/dt = (m/s) / s = m/s^2
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