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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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16y ago

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Related Questions

Can an object be increasing in speed as the magnitude of its acceleraction decreases?

Yes, an object can be increasing in speed even as the magnitude of its acceleration decreases if the object is subject to forces that oppose its motion, like friction or air resistance. In this case, the object may be accelerating due to an unbalanced force, but as the opposing force increases, the net acceleration decreases while the object continues to speed up.


What is the definition of deceleration acceleration?

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When is acceleration of an object positive?

Acceleration of an object is positive when its velocity is increasing over time. This means the object is speeding up in the direction of its motion.


Does acceleration have a negative or positive value if the velocity is increasing speed?

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What is called when an object's speed decreases?

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Does acceleration refers to increasing speed decreasing speed or changing direction?

Acceleration refers to increasing or decreasing speed. When an object changes its speed, it is said to be accelerating, whether the speed is increasing or decreasing. Changing direction is related to a different aspect of motion called velocity.


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'.


What is a Simple definition of acceleration?

Acceleration is the rate of change of an object's velocity with respect to time. It is a measure of how quickly the object's speed is increasing or decreasing.


How is speed and acceleration related?

Speed is a scalar quantity that represents the rate at which an object is moving, while acceleration is a vector quantity that represents the rate of change of an object's velocity. Acceleration can affect the speed of an object by either increasing or decreasing it, depending on whether the acceleration is in the same direction as the object's motion or in the opposite direction. In general, the greater the acceleration, the faster an object's speed will change.


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

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