this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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No, the steering wheel is not technically an accelerator. It doesn't change speed, only direction.
Acceleration is required to change the direction young padawan
acceleration is the change in velocity, and velocity is a combination of both speed and direction
According to this physics website you're wrong
Velocity =/= speed
A change in direction is a change in velocity
My dude, velocity is a vector, if you accelerate a body in a perpendicular direction to its velocity, its velocity will change direction, but not magnitude.
Grab a yoyo, start spinning it around. You are constantly accelerating it towards your hand. If you stopped and let it loose, it would move in a straight line and break the window and mom would be sad.
No acceleration means constant speed in a straight line. If it does not go with constant speed in a straight line, it's being accelerated.
Guess my physics professors back at university were wrong then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Doubt it, I'm going to go out on a limb and say either you didn't take university physics or you weren't paying attention, because like the other commenters said this isn't even university-level physics knowledge, it's highschool.
What have you done to those poor arrows? 😭😭
Yes he was. You should ask for your money back. I don't know how you'd complete even intro physics getting this wrong, as the formulas all depend on it.
This is like high school physics - change in direction is ~~a change in~~ acceleration.
Even better, you can experience this directly - turn the wheel abruptly at a moderate speed - what you feel is called acceleration.
Did your physics professor say "velocity == speed"? Because if so, yes he was
Maybe it was a one-dimensional physics professor
If they said that, yes, they were.
It accelerates laterally. The brake though, decelerates (-ve acceleration) but only until v=zero after which it doesn't decelerate any more.
No, the steering wheel does not accelerate laterally. It just changes the direction of the front wheels which dictate the direction in which a vehicle is accelerated.
RCS thrusters for example are accelerators. A steering wheel is not.
Would the steering wheel have the accelerating wheel on the side of the car it is supposed to turn slow down (like how track tanks turn) it would be an accelerator.
When you turn the wheel, do you feel a g-force to the side? If yes, you’re accelerating.
Changing direction is not acceleration. You also experience inertia when changing directions.
Your lateral velocity is changing. Change in velocity = acceleration. In fact, you’re now traveling in a circle, which requires constant acceleration towards the center.
Changing direction by definition is an acceleration. If it wasn't, then all our math about planets, rockets getting to planets, etc, would be wrong.
A steering wheel could be called a "centripetal accelerator", since it induces acceleration toward the center of a radius/circle.
This is high school level physics, one of the first things you learn.
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/centripetal-acceleration/
Face it, planets are hanging from the celestial ceiling - on wires. Galilei's herecy has been debunked. The end is nigh! Eat more sawdust! Ahoohaa!
Yeah I think the guy above you has an argument though. The steering wheel only acts as an accelerator if the vehicle is actually in motion. But then the brake also does that, so maybe there is a point in naming them differently.
Lemme break it down for ya:
You need to revisit the concept of centripetal acceleration. You are remembering incorrectly. Any change in the velocity vector is acceleration. That can be magnitude and/or direction.
Acceleration and velocity are both vectors dude, they have magnitude and direction. Acceleration is a change in velocity over time, so if you're moving and you change directions, that constitutes a change in velocity, i.e. an acceleration.
Hell, Newton's second law: F=ma. Your car isn't going to change mass appreciably mid-corner, so we can say that the force you feel is proportional to your acceleration. Did you feel yourself turning? Felt your ass slide and body lean? You feel you experience a force, an acceleration.
This concept is foundational to elementary mechanics, you cannot pass physics 1, calculus 1, or I think even college algebra without knowing these concepts.