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Yes, an object can increase in speed and decrease in acceleration.

In fact, this is normally the case whenever you get moving in a car.

Say you are starting up from a stop light in your car (for simplicity assume you have an automatic transmission). If you push the gas pedal part way down and hold it in the same position, then the car will start out at its maximum acceleration. The faster the car goes, the less the acceleration will be.

You can feel this yourself. If you are going slow (say under 20 mph) and push the gas pedal all the way down, you will feel your self being pushed back into the seat (unless you have a very low powered car). Now when you are traveling fast (maybe 60 mph) and you do the same thing, you will notice you are not pushed back in the seat as hard (unless you have a very high powered car). How hard you are pushed back in the seat is a measure of how fast you are accelerating. At the higher speed your acceleration is less. If you just held the pedal all the way down from 20 to 60 the same thing would happen. That is, the acceleration would be less at 60 than at 20, but because of the way the body reacts to acceleration, it is harder to tell that the acceleration is decreasing slowly as the speed increases.

Or, a similar but more quantitative experiment you can do in your car is: With the same gas pedal position, measure how long it takes to go (accelerate) from 10 to 20 mph 20 to 30, 30 to 40, 40 to 50, and then from 50 to 60 mph. You will find that each higher 10 mph takes longer. Acceleration is defined as how fast your speed (in a vector form) is changing. So, you can see that your acceleration is less at higher speeds because it is taking longer to get the same change in speed.

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15y ago
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9y ago

No, acceleration is the rate of increase or decrease in the velocity of an object. An object at high velocity will have zero acceleration if its velocity is not changing. A slow moving object will have high acceleration if its velocity is changing quickly. Answer: The above is correct, but if you have... say a fast moving object in the earth's atmosphere, like a space shuttle entering the earth atmosphere, the faster it goes, the more force will be applied to it to slow it down by the air it has to pass through. So, its possible, that, if you give something a large velocity, like a base ball for example, it will be subject to larger resistance to motion force, which is proportional to the velocity squared and will consequently accelerate more in the opposite direction of motion.

It is very important not to get velocity and acceleration mixed up though. Velocity is the rate of change of displacement; acceleration is the rate of change of velocity. Simply having a high velocity in the absence of an atmosphere will not cause a greater acceleration by itself.

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15y ago

Normally no. But if we mix accelaration with deccelaration, then we can have something like the following example

Suppose we have the following data:

T1= 0 sec , V1=100 m/s

T2= 1 sec , V2=80 m/s

If during the period T1-T2, the acceleration, which actually is decceleration, is constant, then we can say that this accelaration a1= -20 m/s^2

Suppose that at T3 = 2 sec , V3 = 70 m/s, and that during the period T2-T3 the accelaration (which is still deccelaration) is constant, then we can say that this accelaration a2 = -10 m/s^2.

So, for the period T1 to T3, the speed is decreasing (from 100 to 70) , while the accelaration increases from a1= -20 to a2= -10 m/s^2 .

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13y ago

not necessarily. on earth for example there is a constant acceleration of 9.8 m/s^2. if you drop an object off a building its speed will increase but the acceleration acting on the object will remain the same

I think probably the accelaration of the object will increase from newton's law. V^2 =U^2 +2as . there will be an increase in the final velocity of the object as well as displacement.

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7y ago

Yes. Even though the acceleration rate is decreasing, it is still accelerating but at a lower (or slower?) rate. When acceleration rate reaches 0, the speed stops increasing and remains steady.

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11y ago

No. If the acceleration is decreasing, its speed will also decrease.

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15y ago

Yes. As long as acceleration of object is greater than zero in the direction of its movement, the speed in that direction continues to increase.

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13y ago

speed increases with increase in accelaration.

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Q: Can an object be increasing in speed as its acceleration decreases?
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Continue Learning about Physics

When is acceleration of an object positive?

When its speed is increasing


How is velocity of zero different from an acceleration of zero?

Velocity basically means how fast you are going. Acceleration means how much your speed is increasing. So if there is zero velocity that means the object is not moving. If there is zero acceleration, that means that the speed is not increasing but there is actual speed and the object is not increasing it's speed what ever that may be.


Can a body have decreasing acceleration but increasing speed?

Of course. The magnitude (size) of acceleration is the rate at which speed is changing. As long as the magnitude of acceleration is more than zero, speed is increasing. If the magnitude of acceleration is decreasing, then speed is growing more slowly, but it's still increasing. That's exactly what's happening to an object falling through air. As it falls faster and faster, the force of air resistance increases. The object's acceleration shrinks, and it's speed increases more slowly. When the force of air resistance is equal to the object's weight, the net force on it is zero, its acceleration is zero, and its speed stops increasing. It's then at 'terminal velocity'.


If a net torque is applied to an object that object will experience which of the following a constant angular speed angular acceleration or an increasing moment of inertia?

angular acceleration


What is negative acceleration?

Negative Acceleration:Negative Acceleration refers to an object whose speed decreases as it moves away from its original starting position.Actually, that's not entirely correct. Acceleration is a vector quantity and, therefore, depends on direction. If an object is moving in a straight line, in the negative direction, its acceleration is positive if its speed decreases with time and negative if its speed increases with time.Think of it this way: if the acceleration vector is pointed in the same direction as the way an object is moving, the object speeds up. If the acceleration vector is pointed opposite the direction of motion, it slows down.

Related questions

When is acceleration of an object positive?

When its speed is increasing


How is velocity of zero different from an acceleration of zero?

Velocity basically means how fast you are going. Acceleration means how much your speed is increasing. So if there is zero velocity that means the object is not moving. If there is zero acceleration, that means that the speed is not increasing but there is actual speed and the object is not increasing it's speed what ever that may be.


What is called when an object's speed decreases?

car negative acceleration, also deceleration


Can a body have decreasing acceleration but increasing speed?

Of course. The magnitude (size) of acceleration is the rate at which speed is changing. As long as the magnitude of acceleration is more than zero, speed is increasing. If the magnitude of acceleration is decreasing, then speed is growing more slowly, but it's still increasing. That's exactly what's happening to an object falling through air. As it falls faster and faster, the force of air resistance increases. The object's acceleration shrinks, and it's speed increases more slowly. When the force of air resistance is equal to the object's weight, the net force on it is zero, its acceleration is zero, and its speed stops increasing. It's then at 'terminal velocity'.


If a net torque is applied to an object that object will experience which of the following a constant angular speed angular acceleration or an increasing moment of inertia?

angular acceleration


What is negative acceleration?

Negative Acceleration:Negative Acceleration refers to an object whose speed decreases as it moves away from its original starting position.Actually, that's not entirely correct. Acceleration is a vector quantity and, therefore, depends on direction. If an object is moving in a straight line, in the negative direction, its acceleration is positive if its speed decreases with time and negative if its speed increases with time.Think of it this way: if the acceleration vector is pointed in the same direction as the way an object is moving, the object speeds up. If the acceleration vector is pointed opposite the direction of motion, it slows down.


Does an object experiencing a constant velocity have a zero or non-zero value for acceleration?

If an object is sustaining a constant velocity it has 0 acceleration, because acceleration is either increasing or decreasing speed.


What is positive accelerations?

Positive Acceleration refers to the force acting on an object whose speed increases as it moves away from its original starting position. If the velocity is increasing along with time it is called positive acceleration, and if the velocity decreases it is negative acceleration.


What occurs when on object slows down?

It undergoes acceleration, its speed decreases, the magnitude of its velocity decreases, and it takes more time to arrive at its final destination.


What occurs when a object slows down?

It undergoes acceleration, its speed decreases, the magnitude of its velocity decreases, and it takes more time to arrive at its final destination.


What is the definition of deceleration acceleration?

Acceleration is when speed increases. Deceleration is when speed decreases.


What happens to acceleration when speed decreases on a speed time graph?

Acceleration is negative.