I rode up an elevator from the ground level to the eighth floor of a condo building long ago with my daughter, who was three at the time, to visit her great-grandmother. As we approached our destination, and the elevator began to slow down, my daughter asked, "Daddy, are we going down?"
"Amazing," I thought, "kids can sense acceleration, and have already developed the same false preconceptions about it that they bring to their introductory mechanics courses."
It makes sense that people, and all animals for that matter, can sense acceleration, as we live in a dynamic world, and acceleration, which is the rate of change of velocity, may be thought of as the forecaster for motion. If one can detect one's own acceleration, then one can accurately predict one's future position (provided one knows one's own current position and velocity with accuracy).
It makes sense that people, and all animals for that matter, can sense acceleration, as we live in a dynamic world, and acceleration, which is the rate of change of velocity, may be thought of as the forecaster for motion. If one can detect one's own acceleration, then one can accurately predict one's future position (provided one knows one's own current position and velocity with accuracy).
