What is a difference between tangental acceleration and centripetal acceleration? Also when would you use equation for tangental and centripetal?

Question

anonymous · Answer

what do you know about the direction of the vectors?

anonymous · Answer

Tangental acceleration is an acceleration tangent to the rotational motion.. and centripetal acceleration is acceleration directed towards the centre of the motion?

anonymous · Answer

But then.. when would you use tangental acceleration equation or centripetal acceleration equation?

anonymous · Answer

think about roller coaster design, as one example

anonymous · Answer

Not sure what you exactly mean by that...

anonymous · Answer

let's say that you need to figure out how much force a cart exerts on a track so that you can know if the track can sustain it going through a loop.
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so let's say the track can handle N newtons of force. we take the centripetal acceleration of the unit on the track, a. then we take the force by multiplying it by the mass of the cart (F = ma). if f <= N, then we've designed a safe track. :D

anonymous · Answer

Ohh that makes a lot of sense! Thank you

anonymous · Answer

no problem.