Acceleration

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This article is about acceleration in physics. For other uses,
see Acceleration (disambiguation) and Accelerate (disambiguation).

Acceleration

In the absence of air resistance and

thus terminal velocity, a falling ball would
continue to accelerate.

Common symbols a

SI unit m/s2, m·s−2, m s−2

Dimension L T −2

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In physics, acceleration is the rate of change of velocity of an object with
respect to time. An object's acceleration is the net result of all forces acting
on the object, as described by Newton's Second Law.[1] The SI unit for
acceleration is metre per second squared (m⋅s−2). Accelerations
are vector quantities (they have magnitude and direction) and add
according to the parallelogram law.[2][3] The vector of the net force acting on
a body has the same direction as the vector of the body's acceleration, and
its magnitude is proportional to the magnitude of the acceleration, with the
object's mass (a scalar quantity) as proportionality constant.
For example, when a car starts from a standstill (zero velocity, in an inertial
frame of reference) and travels in a straight line at increasing speeds, it
is accelerating in the direction of travel. If the car turns, an acceleration
occurs toward the new direction. The forward acceleration of the car is
called a linear (or tangential) acceleration, the reaction to which
passengers in the car experience as a force pushing them back into their
seats. When changing direction, this is called radial (as orthogonal to
tangential) acceleration, the reaction to which passengers experience as a
sideways force. If the speed of the car decreases, this is an acceleration in
the opposite direction of the velocity of the vehicle, sometimes
called deceleration or Retrograde burning in spacecraft.[4] Passengers
experience the reaction to deceleration as a force pushing them forwards.
Both acceleration and deceleration are treated the same, they are both
changes in velocity. Each of these accelerations (tangential, radial,
deceleration) is felt by passengers until their velocity (speed and direction)
matches that of the uniformly moving car.