Physlet Illustration: Velocity and Acceleration Vectors

 

 

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The blue ball moves in two dimensions.  Can you determine the directions of its velocity and acceleration vectors at any instant?

Hints

  1. The instantaneous velocity vector at any instant points in the direction the object is moving at that instant.
  2. Pause the animation at a couple of different times, one after the other, and determine the instantaneous velocity at each of those times.
  3. The acceleration vector points in a direction that shows the way in which the object's velocity is changing at any instant.
  4. By seeing how the velocity vector changed direction at the two times you picked, can you determine the direction of the acceleration that occurred in the intervening time?

Reference

See Walker, Section 3-5

Illustration written by Steve Mellema and Chuck Niederriter