The final mathematical quantity discussed in Lesson 1 is acceleration. An often confused quantity, acceleration has a meaning much different than the meaning associated with it by sports announcers and other individuals. An object is accelerating if it is changing its velocity. Yet acceleration has nothing to do with going fast. A person can be moving very fast, and still not be accelerating.
Acceleration has to do with changing how fast an object is moving.
If an object is not changing its velocity, then the object is not accelerating. The data at the right are representative of an accelerating object - the velocity is changing with respect to time. Sometimes an accelerating object will change its velocity by the same amount each second. This is referred to as a constant acceleration since the velocity is changing by a constant amount each second. An object with a constant acceleration should not be confused with an object with a constant velocity.