Acceleration

When it’s used in regular conversation, accelerat means to speed up. In science, though, it means a change in velocity. You can use it with numbers and direction to tell whethersomething is moving faster or slower in any direction.

Acceleration is just how much the velocity changes every second.

m/s²

So, you divide how much the velocity changes by how much time it takes to change. One more thing, if you slow down, the change is a negative number. Here’s an example:

Say you’re driving a car at 10 m/s and you decide to stop. You push on the break and stop in 2 seconds. Since you slowed down from 10m/s to 0m/s, the change in velocity is –10m/s.

(-10m/s)/2s
↓
-10m/2s²
↓
-5m/s²

So your acceleration was -5m/s².

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