Question

When will be you say a body is in
(i) uniform acceleration?
(ii) non-uniform acceleration?

Answer 1

Hint: Acceleration is defined as the rate of change of velocity with respect to time. The velocity of a moving body can change uniformly or non-uniformly. Depending on this we can define the type of the acceleration.

Complete answer:
Acceleration of a body can be defined as the rate of change of velocity of the object with respect to time. A body is said to be accelerating whenever it is changing its velocity. the velocity can either increase or decrease with acceleration. We have two types of acceleration – uniform acceleration and non-uniform acceleration.

When the velocity of a body changes by equal amount in an equal interval of time we can say that the body has a uniform acceleration. If the velocity of the body is increasing or decreasing equally in equal intervals of time, we can say that the body is accelerating uniformly. For example, consider a body freely falling through the atmosphere towards the earth. It will have a constant acceleration and the change in velocity will be uniform.

When the velocity of the body changes by different amounts in different amounts of time we can say that the body has a non-uniform acceleration. If the velocity of the body is increasing or decreasing by different amounts in equal intervals of time, we can say that the body has non-uniform acceleration. For example, consider a car moving on a highway through traffic. At some point the velocity of the car will increase and at some other point the velocity of the car will decrease. This is an example of non-uniform acceleration.

Note:
When we draw a graph between the velocity and time form a body with uniform acceleration, we will always get a straight line. When we draw a graph between the velocity and time of a body moving with non-uniform acceleration, we will get a zigzag curve instead of a straight line.