Today we’re going to be talking about average acceleration and instantaneous acceleration. 

In common terms, acceleration is the velocity of the velocity. That means, while

is the formula for average velocity, the formula for average acceleration is

Similarly, for instantaneous acceleration, we have the formula

Here, you can substitute our formula for v (in the previous equation it wouldn’t do much, but in this case, you’ll see the difference soon):

Here, mathematicians went on a stretch and abused the notation (a.k.a. randomly decided) to shorten it into

(For Calculus students, this is where the second derivative notation is from.) This formula for instantaneous acceleration is elementary in calculus. However, we will not be relying on these formulas. Instead, we will use the visual approach from the previous article since it is much more elegant and easy to understand.

This article is shorter than usual, but digesting these notations are essential to understanding the next article. Hence, see you next time! 

You can also find more videos on our YouTube, join our Discord for a helpful community, and check out our courses for more help!

Happy learning!