leaking pen wrote:
good point. i keep forgeting, velocity has a vector in it. in which case, i dont know that its possible to have a scalar meaning for acceleration. by definition its the change of a vector. about the only way i can think of would be to call it the change in speed, and even thats innacurate.
v = (v_x, v_y, v_z) or, using coordinate numbers instead of axis names, v = (v_0, v_1, v_2) and the magnitude of that is: speed = |v| = sqrt(v*v) = sqrt(sum((v_i)^2)), sum from 0 to 2 Change in velocity per time: a = dv/dt = (a_0, a_1, a_2) = (dv_0/dt, dv_1/dt, dv_2/dt) And the magnitude of that is: |a| = sqrt(a*a) = sqrt(sum((a_i)^2)), sum from 0 to 2 But I don't know any nice names for |a|.
