Tangential and Normal Acceleration Components in Projectile Motion

• Felipe Melo Santos ^[1] ; José G. S. Duque ^[1] ; Wagner Ferreira Santos ^[2]
  1. [1] Departamento de Física, Campus Prof. Alberto Carvalho , UFS, 49506-036, Itabaiana, SE, Brazil
  2. [2] Departamento de Matemática, Campus Prof. Alberto Carvalho , UFS, 49506-036, Itabaiana, SE, Brazil
• Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 62, Nº. 9, 2024, págs. 758-762
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In this work, we analyze projectile motion in terms of its normal and tangential acceleration components. It is well established in most high school and university physics textbooks that projectile motion can be studied in the Cartesian plane as a composition of two independent motions: one in the x-axis orientation (uniform rectilinear motion) and the other in the y-axis orientation (uniformly varied rectilinear motion). It is important to additionally consider that this motion is subject to Earth’s gravitational field, which acts perpendicular to its surface in the downward direction. However, since the velocity vector varies in both magnitude and direction throughout the projectile motion, it is possible to view it from a different perspective. In this viewpoint, the acceleration can be decomposed into two components: a tangential component, caused by changes in the magnitude of the velocity vector, and a normal component, caused by changes in the direction of the velocity vector. In this scenario, we provide a detailed description of these normal and tangential components of acceleration.