Chapter 6, Problem 1A

What produces acceleration?

To determine

To find: The cause for acceleration.

Answer to Problem 1A

Change in speed or direction or both can cause acceleration

Explanation of Solution

Introduction:

The speed of an object is a scalar quantity and mentioning the variation of speed of an object along with the direction of motion makes it a vector quantity which is velocity.

When an object undergoes a variation in its speed or its direction of motion, sometimes both speed and direction over a period of time, the object undergoes acceleration. It can be expressed as how quickly the speed of an object gets varied with time. Mathematically, this is given by,

  $a=\frac{\Delta v}{\Delta t}$