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Tangential Acceleration Formula

Tangential acceleration measures how quickly tangential velocity changes in rotational motion and is calculated using the formula atan = rα, where r is the radius and α is the angular acceleration. Examples provided include a car's tires with a tangential acceleration of 2.40 m/s² and a toy top with an angular acceleration of 108 radians/s². The concept emphasizes the relationship between angular and tangential acceleration in circular motion.

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Rafiq Parvez
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512 views3 pages

Tangential Acceleration Formula

Tangential acceleration measures how quickly tangential velocity changes in rotational motion and is calculated using the formula atan = rα, where r is the radius and α is the angular acceleration. Examples provided include a car's tires with a tangential acceleration of 2.40 m/s² and a toy top with an angular acceleration of 108 radians/s². The concept emphasizes the relationship between angular and tangential acceleration in circular motion.

Uploaded by

Rafiq Parvez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Tangential Acceleration Formula

In rotational motion, tangential acceleration is a measure of how quickly a


tangential velocity changes. It always acts perpendicular to the centripetal
acceleration of a rotating object. It is equal to the angular acceleration α, times
the radius of the rotation.
tangential acceleration = (radius of the rotation)(angular acceleration)
atan = rα
atan = tangential acceleration
r = radius of the object's rotation
α = angular acceleration, with units radians/s 2
Tangential Acceleration Formula Questions:
1) A car that has tires with radius 20.0 cm (0.200 m) begins to accelerate
forward. The acceleration comes from the engine, which produces an angular
acceleration of the tires α = 12.0 radians/s2. What is the tangential acceleration
of the tires?
Answer: The tangential acceleration of the tires can be found from the formula:
atan = rα
atan = (0.200 m)(12.0 radians/s2)
atan = 2.40 m/s2
The tangential acceleration of the tires is 2.40 m/s 2 (this is also the resulting
acceleration of the car).
2) A child spins a toy top, applying a force to the peg in the middle. The force
applied results in a tangential acceleration of the peg. If the radius of the peg is
0.50 cm (0.0050 m), and the tangential acceleration applied is a tan = 0.540 m/s2,
what is the angular acceleration of the top?
Answer: The angular acceleration can be found by rearranging the equation:

α=
α = 108 radians/s2
The angular acceleration of the top is 108 radians/s 2.
In physics, tangential acceleration is a measure of how the tangential velocity of
a point at a certain radius changes with time. Tangential acceleration is just like
linear acceleration, but it’s specific to the tangential direction, which is relevant to
circular motion. You start with the magnitude of the angular acceleration,

which tells you how the speed of the object in the tangential direction is
changing.

For example, when you start a lawn mower, a point on the tip of one of its blades
starts at a tangential velocity of zero and ends up with a tangential velocity with a
pretty large magnitude. So how do you determine the point’s tangential
acceleration? You can start with the following equation, which relates velocity to
acceleration

Tangential velocity, v, equals

so you can plug in this information in the previous equation to relate the
tangential acceleration to the change in angular velocity:

Because the radius is constant here, the equation becomes

However,

the angular acceleration, so the equation becomes


Translated into layman’s terms, this says tangential acceleration equals angular
acceleration multiplied by the radius.

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