Question

You are driving north on a highway. then, without changing speed, you round a curve and drive east. does your velocity change? do you accelerate? explain.

Answer 1

Good afternoon!


The velocity vector changes from direction, but the velocity value is constant, since its value do not change.

Yes, you accelerate, since the only way to make an object change its direction(and inertia) is applying a force to it. With a force, we always have acceleration. In this case, you gain a centripetal acceleration, that is responsible to change the direction, but not the value of the velocity.

Answer 2

Explanation:

In this case, the driver is driving towards north on a highway. The driver doesn't changes speed, rounds a curve and drive east. We know that, speed is a scalar quantity and velocity is a vector quantity.

The driver is changing the direction of motion, so its velocity changes. On the curve, the driver will have centripetal acceleration. As we know that the change in velocity per unit time is called acceleration.

Hence, this is the required solution.