Objectives
- To understand how the acceleration vector of a vector valued function of one variable is defined.
Section 5.5 Acceleration
Subsection 5.5.1 The Acceleration Vector
This lesson defines and explores the acceleration vector as the change in the velocity vector. Specifically, the acceleration vector is calculated as the derivative of the velocity vector and thus measures the changes in both the magnitude and direction of the velocity vector. Several animated examples are given and the motivation for the splitting of acceleration into principle directions is briefly described. Be sure to go through the lessons on the unit normal and unit tangent vectors before doing the lesson on the splitting of acceleration.
