Question

Acceleration is the change in velocity over time. Given this information, is acceleration a vector or a scalar quantity? Explain.

Short answer

Acceleration is a vector quantity.

Step-by-step solution

Scalar and vector quantity

A quantity defined by only the help of the magnitude is called a scalar quantity. This kind of quantity does not require direction for mentioning.

Examples of scalar quantity are mass, distance, temperature, etc.

A quantity that requires both magnitudes, as well as the direction is called a vector quantity.

Examples of vector quantity are velocity, displacement, force, etc.

Acceleration

Acceleration is the ratio of the change in the velocity of the object to that of the time taken to do that change as:

$\mathrm{a}=\frac{{\mathrm{v}}_2-{\mathrm{v}}_1}{\mathrm{t}}$

Where v₁and v₂ are the velocities at positions1and2.

T is the time taken to change the velocity.

The unit of acceleration is m/s².

The acceleration obeys all laws of vector addition, including the parallelogram and triangular laws of vector addition.

As a result of the above reasoning, we may say that acceleration is a vector quantity.