Question

A race car has a centripetal acceleration of 15.625 m/s2 as it goes around a curve. If the curve is a circle with radius 40 m, what is the speed of the car?

Answer 1

The centripetal acceleration is given by

`a_c = (v^2)/(r)`
where v is the tangential speed and r the radius of the circular orbit.

For the car in this problem,
`a_c = 15.625 m/s^2` and r=40 m, so we can re-arrange the previous equation to find the velocity of the car:

`v= √(a_c r)= √((15.625 m/s^2)(40 m))=25 m/s`