Ontario Grade 9 Science Class Practice Exam 2025 – Your Complete Guide to Exam Success!

Acceleration in physical terms refers to the change in velocity over time. This encompasses any alteration in the speed or direction of an object's motion. When an object speeds up, slows down, or changes direction, it is experiencing acceleration.

Velocity is a vector quantity, which means it has both magnitude (speed) and direction. Since acceleration is defined as the rate of change of this velocity with respect to time, it indicates how quickly or in what manner the velocity of an object is changing. For example, if a car increases its speed from 20 km/h to 60 km/h in 5 seconds, the acceleration can be calculated based on this change in velocity.

In contrast to this, constant speed indicates no change in velocity, total distance does not account for direction or time, and force relates to the interaction that causes an object to accelerate rather than describing the concept of acceleration itself. Thus, understanding acceleration as the change in velocity over time is fundamental to grasping the principles of motion in physics.