What is Acceleration?

Acceleration is a vector quantity that is defined as the rate at which an object changes its velocity. An object is accelerating if it is changing its velocity. Sports announcers will occasionally say that a person is accelerating if he/she is moving fast. Yet acceleration has nothing to do with going fast. A person can be moving very fast and still not be accelerating. Acceleration has to do with changing how fast an object is moving. If an object is not changing its velocity, then the object is not accelerating. Anytime an object's velocity is changing, the object is said to be accelerating; it has an acceleration.

Sometimes an accelerating object will change its velocity by the same amount each second. This is referred to as a constant acceleration since the velocity is changing by a constant amount each second. An object with a constant acceleration should not be confused with an object with a constant velocity. Don't be fooled! If an object is changing its velocity -whether by a constant amount or a varying amount - then it is an accelerating object. And an object with a constant velocity is not accelerating.

The following is the formula for calculating average acceleration:

f (Final Velocity) and i (Initial Velocity)