Circular Motion

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Chapter 5 Circular Motion

An object is in a circular motion if it is moving in a circle or in a circular arc. There are many interesting applications of circular motion in nature. In this chapter, we will study both uniform and nonuniform motion in a circle. In a uniform motion, speed is constant and only the direction of velocity changes with time. The change in direction occurs as a result of center-pointing acceleration, called centripetal acceleration. In a nonuniform motion, motion is also either speeding up or slowing down, which is due to an additional acceleration pointed tangentially to the circle, called tangential acceleration.

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