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A2A: What is the difference between tangential, angular and centripetal

acceleration and when will a body moving in a circle possess them?

Suppose you have a rotor that is turning. The rate of turn can be expressed in many
different units: RPM, degrees per second, radians/min, revolutions per day. If that
rotation rate changes with time, then there is an angular acceleration. That angular
acceleration could also be expressed with many different units. Could be degrees per
second per hour, meaning that every hour, the angular speed would increase by so
many degrees per second. A car engine’s speed might be increasing at 500 RPM per
second. For dynamics problems, we often use rad/s per second. So that is rad/s^2. In
this case, every point on the rotor is experiencing the same angular acceleration.

Now if we look at a point on the rotor some distance r from the axis, then it will have a
tangential acceleration along its circular path equal to r times the angular acceleration
of the body. We often use the Greek symbol, alpha, for angular acceleration. Suppose
alpha = 4 rad/s^2 and r = 0.5 m. Then that point will have a tangential acceleration of 2
m/s^2. That is the same unit of acceleration as we use for gravity (9.81 m/s^2). That 2
m/s^2 can be interpreted as the speed changing 2 m/s every second. Every point on the
rotor except points right on the axis of rotation will have a tangential acceleration
whenever the rotor as a whole has an angular acceleration.

Centripetal acceleration is an acceleration that corresponding to changing the direction


of velocity rather than changing the speed (the magnitude of velocity). Consider the
same point on the rotor at r = 0.5 m. Suppose the rotor is turning at a steady 3 rad/s.
There is no angular acceleration and no tangential acceleration. But there is a
centripetal acceleration. The point is following a circular path. Its velocity vector is
changing. The direction it is pointing is changing every instant as it goes around the
circle. We can express that change in the velocity vector in m/s per sec. That is an
acceleration, and we write those units as m/s^2 just like acceleration along the path,
except this time, the acceleration, which is also a vector, is pointed inward towards the
center of the circle. Every point on the rotor except the axis will have centripetal
acceleration whenever the rotor is turning.

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/s2

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/s2 (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 atan = 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/s2.

What is the difference between,angular, centripetal and tangential


acceleration,how one produces the other?

All 3 accelerations are terms used to describe a property of circular motion. "Angular"
means looking at it from a purely rotational point of view; "tangential" means looking at
the same motion from a linear (straight-line motion) point of view; and centripetal
acceleration is the result of a special force (centripetal force) which transforms linear
motion into rotational motion.

A REMINDER: Be sure to select a Best Answer before your Question moves into the
Voting stage! Thanks.

The Longer Answer:


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Generally, "accelerations" are changes in "velocities", so it helps to consider both when
defining the one.

(1a.) Angular velocity (ω): This is a vector that specifies rotational speed of an object in
circular motion--e.g., rotations per second--plus direction, which is expressed as the axis
of rotation. There is a diagram showing the two characteristics (magnitude and
direction) in Reference 1.

(1b.) Angular acceleration (α): The rate of change of ω; given in radians/sec^2. So α


represents a speeding up or slowing down of a rotation. See reference 2.

(2a.) Centripetal force: ("Force" is a more common pairing with centripetal than is
velocity.) A force which makes a body follow a curved path; it is perpendicular to its
velocity and points toward the center of curvature of the instantaneous path. Gravity is
an example of a centripetal force; so is a "tether" (string) between the center and the
rotating object. See reference 3.
The formula for centripetal force is F_c = m * (v^2 / r), where v is the tangential velocity
(see below) and r is the radius of the circle of rotation.

(2b.) Centripetal acceleration: This is the acceleration that correlates with centripetal
force.
Since F_c = m * a_c = m * (v^2 / r), then centripetal acceleration is defined to be:

a_c = v^2 / r.

(3a.) Tangential velocity: This is a vector quantity that represents the velocity tangential
to the circle of rotation, so its direction is constantly changing. Its magnitude has the
units of [distance / time], where the distance is that measured along the arc of travel--
i.e., if you unrolled the circle into a straight line. Again, see diagram in ref. 3.

(3b.) Tangential acceleration: This is the rate of change of tangential velocity. It is the
result of a force being applied in a direction aligned with the tangential velocity.

NOTE: Tangential velocity and acceleration are simply the straight-line (linear) velocity
and acceleration in a rotational context. If the centripetal force were to go to zero
suddenly, the body would continue moving at the direction and speed of its tangential
velocity and acceleration--that is, in a straight line.

NOW: As to your question of "which produces the other": First, all the above definitions
and equations can be thought of as EXPRESSING RELATIONSHIPS between the various
properties of rotational motion. For example, two of the accelerations are simply time
derivatives of the corresponding velocities; and the third (centripetal acceleration)
relates the mass of the body to the force applied.

Second, since three of the six properties are accelerations, each is produced by a force
acting somehow on the moving body. You can think of there being two types of forces in
rotational motion: The force which starts the body to move and changes its rate of
motion, and another force which causes its motion (normally in a straight line) to be in a
circle. The former is called the tangential force (producing tangential acceleration), and
the latter is called the centripetal force. The resolution of these two forces is what
produces circular motion.

BTW, to complete the terminology suite for rotational motion, it is useful to add the
notion of torque (τ). This describes yet another attribute of rotational motion, the
quantity represented by F * r, where F is the tangential force mentioned above, and r
again is the radius. If you apply unbalanced torque, you will produce angular
acceleration (1b.). And the ratio of the torque to the resultant acceleration is given by:

(τ / α) = I

I is called the moment of inertia. It is similar to mass, and there's more about it at refs 5
and 6.
The other two causative forces (centripetal and tangential) have already been discussed
above.

I hope this helps!

What is the difference between angular speed and tangential speed in a circular
motion?

I was looking a long time for the way the equations of this two speeds are
obtained, and i found pretty much nothing important, so can someone explain
how are those obtained, and which is the difference between them?

angular speed is the rate of change of the angle (in radians) with time, and it has units
1/s, while tangential speed is the speed of a point on the surface of the spinning object,
which is the angular speed times the distance from the point to the axis of rotation.

----

What helped me to understand this is to think about 2 objects on a spinning disk, one
being close to the center of the disk and one being close to the outside of the disk.
Angular (rotation) speed deals strictly with the angle. How long does each object take to
move an angle of pi when the disk is spinning? It takes them the same amount of time,
so they have the same angular speed.

However, think about the actual speed of each object. The one that is further away from
the center has to go a further distance to go around the circle than the one close to the
center in the same amount of time, so it is going faster (tangential speed). For this
reason the radius (how far it is from the center) must be considered in the tangential
speed:

V_tangential = V_angular * radius

And simularly you can take the known tangential speed to find the angular speed:

V_angular = V_tangential / radius

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