# centripetal acceleration of car

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• October 31st 2007, 10:06 PM
rcmango
centripetal acceleration of car
A car travels at a constant speed around a circular track whose radius is 2.6 km. The car goes once around the track in 330 s. What is the magnitude of the centripetal acceleration of the car?
and i get 9.4E-4 m/s^2

and that seems to be the wrong answer.

first i used: (2 * pi * r) / T

and then
i used: a = v^2 / 2 for centripetal acceleration

please help me with this one.
• November 1st 2007, 01:40 AM
CaptainBlack
Quote:

Originally Posted by rcmango
A car travels at a constant speed around a circular track whose radius is 2.6 km. The car goes once around the track in 330 s. What is the magnitude of the centripetal acceleration of the car?
and i get 9.4E-4 m/s^2

and that seems to be the wrong answer.

first i used: (2 * pi * r) / T

and then
i used: a = v^2 / 2 for centripetal acceleration

please help me with this one.

$a=v \dot\theta=\frac{2\pi~r}{t}~\frac{2\pi}{t}=\frac{4 \pi^2~r}{t^2}=\frac{4\pi^2~2600}{330^2}\approx 0.94 ~\rm{ m/s^2}$

where