15. Uniform circular motion

To understand the Uniform circular motion simply we can do an experiment.

 

Take a piece of thread and tie a small stone at one of its ends. Rotate the stone in a circular path with constant speed by holding the thread at the other end.

 

 

Now if you release the stone and observe at which direction does the stone travel.

 

When you released the stone moves along a straight line tangential to the circular path. This happens because once the stone is released, it continues to move along the direction it has been moving at that instant.

 

This clearly shows that the direction of motion of that stone is changed at every point when the stone was moving along the circular path.

 

Therefore, we can say state the uniform circular motions as,

When a stone is moving with a constant speed along a circular path, the velocity of the stone changes due to the change in direction. Hence it is an accelerated motion.

 

Now we see the a few examples of uniform circular motions: