0

I was solving exercises on Physics Part I: Textbook for Class XI, NCERT, ed. July 2021 when I came across the following question:

A particle in one-dimensional motion with constant speed must have zero acceleration

We've got to say if this statement's true or false, with a reason and an example.

When I headed over to the answer section, I found that they've said:

True (if the particle rebounds instantly with the same speed, it implies infinite acceleration which is unphysical)

How does a particle which rebounds instantly with the same speed have infinite acceleration?

Qmechanic
  • 220,844
archie
  • 395

3 Answers3

3

If you consider a rebounding particle in 1D, an instantaneous change in velocity (say from +x towards -x direction; but with the magnitude / speed remaining the same) means that the change happens in an instant - the time elapsed during this reversal is zero. Anything divided by zero blows up and as acceleration is defined as change in velocity over some time interval, hence acceleration in the rebounding scenario becomes infinite.

Practically speaking, a force needs to be applied to the particle for rebounding to happen. For the acceleration to be infinite the force must also be infinite (assuming the the particle has non zero mass). Infinities in the world are impossible to attain therefore this scenario is unpractical / unphysical.

You can reframe the question and ask yourself: A particle in one-dimensional motion with constant velocity must have zero acceleration

The answer is always True (with no ifs and buts).

1

A particle in one-dimensional motion with constant speed must have zero acceleration

Acceleration is the rate of change of velocity with respect to time.
Velocity is speed plus a direction.

If the speed (magnitude of velocity) is constant then the only way there can be an acceleration is for the direction of the particle's motion to reverse.
If the reversal in direction happens with the particle maintaining constant speed the reversal in direction must happen instantaneously - the component of velocity against time graph is a step function.
Physically this is impossible as this would imply an infinite acceleration, $\displaystyle \lim_{\Delta t \to 0} \frac{\Delta v}{\Delta t}=\infty$, so the condition that the speed is constant also implies that the direction is constant.
This means that the velocity is constant so there can be no acceleration.

The statement is true.

Farcher
  • 104,498
1

In a 1 dimensional setting at any given non-zero speed, there are precisely two velocities which have that speed, one pointing in one direction and one pointing in another. If one does not change from one of these velocities to the other, then this is obviously a zero acceleration situation. If one does change from one of these to the other, it must be instantaneous, as there are no intermediate velocities which have the same speed. Any non-instantaneous change must be changing speed during that transition period, which is in violation of the "constant speed" assumption.

What this means is that, in these situations where the velocity changes direction (such as rebounding off a wall), this model is insufficient to describe precisely what happens at the transition. In classical mechanics, velocities are changed continuously, and the associated acceleration is proportional to the force applied to the object. An infinite acceleration obliges an infinite force (note: Newton's laws only apply to objects which have a non-zero mass).

In practice, we can work around this limitation with some logic. Choosing $t=0$ to be the time at which the object rebounds (just for ease of notation), we can say that the object has a constant speed before impact, and a constant speed in the opposite direction after impact. The traditional approach to this is to define some very short duration $\epsilon$ and say that the speed is constant for $t<-\epsilon$ and constant in the opposite direction for $t>\epsilon$ and that "something happens" during $-\epsilon \le t \le \epsilon$. We then reason about what happens using other approaches. For instance, we know that momentum is conserved in all Newtonian systems, and energy is conserved in elastic collisions. Between these we can constrain what can possibly happen during that "something happens" window and reason that the velocity changed direction somehow.

"All models are wrong; some are useful." By considering smaller and smaller $\epsilon$ values, where the window of "something happens" gets shorter and shorter, we start to see a convergence in what can possibly happen, so long as the conservation of momentum and energy apply. And we can take this to an extreme and say "well, what if $\epsilon=0$?" It's not "correct" in the sense that it implies infinite accelerations and infinite forces, but for purposes of calculating what happens at all times other than $t=0$, it is effective.

Thus we can model the system as a particle moving at a constant speed in one direction for $t<0$ and moving at a constant speed in the other direction for $t>0$. We just can't say very much about what happens at $t=0$. The model is not very useful for answering questions like this. We typically have to move to a more complicated model, such as one with 2 dimensions or one with deformation. But we'll find that in a lot of practical situations, this is actually good enough to do the predictions we need.

Cort Ammon
  • 53,814
  • 6
  • 103
  • 176