Prevention of the pathophysiologic effects of acceleration in humans: fundamentals and historic perspectives

E H Wood1

  • 1Mayo Found. Med. Sch., Rochester, MN.

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The importance of understanding acceleration spans our day-to-day experiences, as well as the vast reaches of outer space and the tiny world of subatomic physics. In everyday conversation, to accelerate means to speed up. For instance, we are familiar with the acceleration of our car; the harder we apply our foot to the gas pedal, the faster we accelerate. The greater the acceleration, the greater the change in velocity over a given time. Acceleration is widely seen in experimental physics. In...
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Instantaneous Acceleration

Acceleration is in the direction of the change in velocity, but it is not always in the direction of motion. When an object slows down, its acceleration is opposite to the direction of its motion. Although commonly referred to as deceleration, this causes confusion in our analysis as deceleration is not a vector, and does not point to a specific direction with respect to a coordinate system. Therefore, the term deceleration is not used. For example, when a subway train slows down, it...
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Measuring Acceleration Due to Gravity

Consider a coffee mug hanging on a hook in a pantry. If the mug gets knocked, it oscillates back and forth like a pendulum until the oscillations die out.
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