Does acceleration depend on Speed of the car or Direction of travel? For my phys

Question

Does acceleration depend on Speed of the car or Direction of travel?

For my physics lab we used a flat track, photogates, a Pasco car, and excel to calculate the velocity and acceleration of a car (Studying concept of friction).

We did a slow car test, a fast car test, a control run, and then an opposite direction test (just turned the car the other direction and pushed it). There was no control of the way the car was pushed in a fast or slow speed method. Especially for the control and opposite direction run where it was just pushed at a random speed. I am to determine from my data (attached) exactly how much acceleration there was when the cars rolled down the track and also if the acceleration depends on speed of the car or the direction from travel.

I can figure out the accelerations from each time they rolled down but I do not understand how to interpret my data to determine if the acceleration depends on the speed or direction. Looking at the data it looks like acceleration obviously depends on the speed. And It does not make any sense to me how going the opposite direction could affect acceleration, but the data also shows that compared to the control, the acceleration in the opposite direction has a greater velocity but that could just be because we did not control the speed of the car?

Help.

http://s13.postimg.org/sham2gsdj/Screen_Shot_2015_09_19_at_9_16_34_PM.png link to the img below

SLOW CAR imes from Logger Pro (s 3.456408 4.155433 0.699025 FAST CAR mes from Logger Pro (s 1.206043 1.523244 Control adistance Gate 1 Gate 2Time in Gate 1s) 5tGate 1(s) 86491 576287 3.4-3.33.2 3.1 -3 2.9 -2.82.7 -2.6 Acceleration (cm/s^2) Cells for Graph CONTROL RUN Times from Logger Pro (s) 2.273352 a from distance 6a distance Start of Gate 1 Time in Gate 1s) vbefore (cm/s) vbefore(cm/s) bar 0.229634 Time in Gate 2s) 0.254553 3.073754857 0.19428331 5tGate 2 (s) vafter(cm/s 8910521 6vafter(cm/s) 196422749 aTime(cm/s^2) 3.116759777 | 5aTime(cm/s*2) 4.380935 2.107583 2.132502 200425 0124595 CCELERATION: SLOW CAR Times from Logger Pro (s) 2.148282 a from distance 6a distance Start of Gate 1 Time in Gate 1s) vbefore (cm/s) vbefore(cm/s) bar 0.309481 Time in Gate 2s) 0.368432 2.675696083 1009762 5tGate 2 (s) vafter(cm/s 6vafter(cm/s) aTime(cm/s^2) 2.772302468 | 5aTime(cm/s*2) 5.009426 2.861144 2.920095 2.8906195 131108941 ACCELERATION: FAST CAR a from distance 6a distance Start of Gate 1 Time in Gate 1s) vbefore (cm/s) vbefore(cm/s) Times from Logger Pro (s) 1.501184 1.650851 bar 0.149667 Time in Gate 2s) 0.150753 0.557864785 49802167 5tGate 2 (s) vafter[cm/s 2.817191 6vafter(cm/s) aTime(cm/s^2) 0.568721823 | 5aTime(cm/s*2) 0773 166835 1.311263 1.312349 2.9632 CCELERATION: Opposite imes from Logger Pro (s) 1.224889 1411448 before (cm/s) Start of bar Gate 1 Gate 2 Time in Gate 1(s) 0.186559 0.206472 5vbefore(cm/s) 4.591589719 6vafter(cm/s) aTime(cm/s-2) 4.697283207 | 5aTime(cm/s^2) 1.71582 3.127268

Explanation / Answer

The accelartion depends upon the speed of car. It does not depend on direction of travel.

However, the direction of accelartion need not in the direction of travel. If car is speeding up in a uniform linear motion, the direction of acceleration is in same direction of direction of travel. If car is slowing down, the direction of acceleration is opposite to direction of travel.

For uniform circular motion, the accelration ( centripetal accelration) is perpendicualr to direction of travel.

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