acceleration

We have to go back to Latin to discover the etymological origin of the term acceleration, which we are now going to thoroughly analyze. Thus, we find the fact that that word is made up of three Latin parts: the prefix ad- which means "towards", the word speed up which can be translated as "fast" and the suffix -tion which is synonymous with "action and effect."

The acceleration is the accelerating action and effect (Increase Speed). The term also allows to name the vector magnitude which expresses said increase in speed in a unit of time (meter per second every second, according to its unit in the International System).

Acceleration can be negative; In these cases, the magnitude would express a decrease in speed as a function of the weather.

It is important to distinguish between velocity (which reflects how the position of a body changes with respect to time) and acceleration (which indicates how this speed has changed). Acceleration mentions how velocity changes, not what velocity looks like: a body moving at high speed can have very little acceleration.

There are different types of acceleration. The tangential acceleration It is one that relates the variation of speed with time. On the other hand, the normal or centripetal acceleration links changes in direction over time.

On the other hand, the average acceleration allows you to calculate the average change in speed in a given time interval.

All of them are very important terms, as is the well-known centrifugal acceleration, which is one that is irretrievably determined by the centrifugal force. In other words, it is about the acceleration experienced by bodies in motion within a system of rotation, which means that they will "flee" from the center.

And all this without forgetting what is known as the Coriolis acceleration or the Coriolis effect. The French scientist that gives it its name, Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis, was the one who in 1836 described what is nothing more than the relative acceleration of a moving body within what is a rotational reference system.

Acceleration can have different directions. When the body is slowing down, its acceleration is directed in the opposite direction to its movement. On the other hand, when a body is increasing its speed (that is, it is accelerating), the acceleration maintains the same direction as the speed.

In addition to all the above, we cannot ignore the fact that there is also what is known as the acceleration of the fixed stars. An expression that is used in the field of Astronomy to refer to the daily interval in which, by the same meridian, the passage of a star is ahead of that of the Sun. Specifically, that has been calculated to correspond to three minutes and fifty-six seconds.

Finally, we can mention that the acceleration can refer to the act of giddy or dazed of a person: "Carlos is accelerated and does not think what he is doing".