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Velocity is the speed in combination with the direction of motion of an object. Velocity is a fundamental concept in kinematics, the branch of classical mechanics that describes the motion of bodies. Velocity is a physical vector quantity: both magnitude and direction are needed to define it.
Speed is the magnitude of velocity (a vector), which indicates additionally the direction of motion. Speed has the dimensions of distance divided by time. The SI unit of speed is the metre per second (m/s), but the most common unit of speed in everyday usage is the kilometre per hour (km/h) or, in the US and the UK, miles per hour (mph).
Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed, and frame of reference to an observer, measuring the change in position of the body relative to that frame with a change in time.
Newton's laws are often stated in terms of point or particle masses, that is, bodies whose volume is negligible. This is a reasonable approximation for real bodies when the motion of internal parts can be neglected, and when the separation between bodies is much larger than the size of each.
Figure 1: Velocity v and acceleration a in uniform circular motion at angular rate ω; the speed is constant, but the velocity is always tangential to the orbit; the acceleration has constant magnitude, but always points toward the center of rotation.
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Like any physical quantity that is a function of velocity, the kinetic energy of an object depends on the relationship between the object and the observer's frame of reference. Thus, the kinetic energy of an object is not invariant. Spacecraft use chemical energy to launch and gain considerable kinetic energy to reach orbital velocity. In an ...
The radial velocity or line-of-sight velocity of a target with respect to an observer is the rate of change of the vector displacement between the two points. It is formulated as the vector projection of the target-observer relative velocity onto the relative direction or line-of-sight (LOS) connecting the two points.