Up until now, our Newton\u2019s second law problems have focused on objects that moved along a line. If the velocity and acceleration vectors pointed in the same direction, the object would speed up.\u00a0 If they pointed in opposite directions, the object would slow down.\u00a0 If the acceleration was zero, it motion wouldn\u2019t change.\u00a0 But what our object hasn\u2019t done before now is turn off of the line it was initially traveling along.<\/p>\n
Allowing our object to turn gives us a new type of motion, one that is no longer just linear.\u00a0To start with, we will consider the simplest type of motion where an object turns, uniform circular motion.\u00a0 In uniform circular motion, an object moves along a circle at a constant speed because the velocity and acceleration vectors are always perpendicular to each other.\u00a0 The acceleration always points towards the center of the circle, making it a centripetal acceleration.\u00a0 As we will see, we can relate the centripetal acceleration to the centripetal force which causes the object to move along a circular path.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t