Kinematics – Why is the Magnitude of the Vector Negative?

kinematicsvectors

Note that I will be using bold letters like $\mathbf{r}$ to represent vectors throughout my question.

Say you have a body in motion whose position vector is given by $\mathbf{r} = |r|\hat{\mathbf{n}}$, where $\hat{\mathbf{n}}$ is the unit vector along $\mathbf{r}$. Now,

$$\frac{d\textbf{r}}{dt}=\mathbf{v}=|\mathbf{v}|\hat{\mathbf{n}} \tag{1}$$

where $\mathbf{v}$ is the velocity of the particle.

$$\frac{d\textbf{v}}{dt}=\mathbf{a}=|\mathbf{a}|\hat{\mathbf{n}} \tag{2}$$

where $\mathbf{a}$ is the particle's acceleration.

Say $|\mathbf{r}|=sin(t)$. Using this, we get from (1):

$$\mathbf{v}=|\mathbf{v}|\hat{\mathbf{n}}=cos(t)\hat{\mathbf{n}}$$

And from (2):

$$\mathbf{a}=|\mathbf{a}|\hat{\mathbf{n}}=-sin(t)\hat{\mathbf{n}}$$

We divide both sides by $\hat{\mathbf{n}}$, and get $|\mathbf{a}|=-sin(t)$ which will be negative for $0<t<\pi$. How can the vector's magnitude be negative? Is it wrong to divide by $\hat{\mathbf{n}}$ on both sides? Or is it wrong to consider $\hat{\mathbf{n}}$ as a constant while differentiating?

Best Answer

Here are some errors in your setup.

  1. Your assumption $|\mathbf{r}|=\sin t$ already means that the magnitude of $\mathbf{r}$ is not positive semi-definite (it is sometimes negative), so is not a consistent assumption.
  2. In general you do have to allow the direction of a vector $\hat{\mathbf{n}}$ to depend on time, so it should be differentiated in addition to the magnitude.
  3. There's no reason for the position vector to point in the same direction as the velocity vector, and no reason for either to point in the same direction as the acceleration vector. So you should use a different symbol for the direction of each vector, rather than reusing the symbol $\hat{\mathbf{n}}$.
  4. You can't divide an equation by a vector. If you have an equation like $a \hat{\mathbf{n}} = b \hat{\mathbf{n}}$, you can conclude that $a=b$, but the argument is not that you divide by $\hat{\mathbf{n}}$, because that is not a valid operation. Instead, you should subtract $b \hat{\mathbf{n}}$ from both sides so that the equation is $(a-b) \hat{\mathbf{n}}=0$. Then, you can dot both sides by $\hat{\mathbf{n}}$, and the equation becomes $(a-b)\hat{\mathbf{n}} \cdot \hat{\mathbf{n}} = a-b = 0$, which implies $a=b$.
  5. It's not dimensionally correct to write $\sin(t)$. The argument of a function like sine that is not a pure power law should always be dimensionless. You should get in the practice of writing $\sin \omega t$, where $\omega=2\pi f$ is the angular frequency, and $f$ is the frequency.

Here's how I would have done this calculation. I'm not 100% sure what you meant to do for the position vector, but let's say the particle is moving in a circle of radius $r$ (an extreme example where in fact the magnitude of the displacement doesn't change and the only thing that needs to be differentiated is the unit vector $\hat{\mathbf{n}}(t)$)

\begin{eqnarray} \mathbf{r} &=& r \cos \omega t \hat{\mathbf{x}} + r \sin \omega t \hat{\mathbf{y}} = r \hat{\mathbf{n}}_1(t) \\ \frac{d\mathbf{r}}{dt} &=& -\omega r \sin \omega t \hat{\mathbf{x}} + \omega r \cos \omega t \hat{\mathbf{y}} = \omega r \hat{\mathbf{n}}_2(t) \\ \frac{d^2\mathbf{r}}{dt^2} &=& - \omega^2 r \cos \omega t \hat{\mathbf{x}} - \omega^2 r \sin \omega t \hat{\mathbf{y}} = - \omega^2 \mathbf{r} = - \omega^2 r \hat{\mathbf{n}}_1(t) \end{eqnarray} where $\hat{\mathbf{n}}_1(t) = \cos (\omega t) \hat{\mathbf{x}} + \sin (\omega t) \hat{\mathbf{y}}$ and $\hat{\mathbf{n}}_2(t) = - \sin(\omega t) \hat{\mathbf{x}} + \cos(\omega t)\hat{\mathbf{y}}$. When doing the derivatives, I chose to split up the vector $\mathbf{r}$ into Cartesian components with unit vectors $\hat{\mathbf{x}}$ and $\hat{\mathbf{y}}$ (which are constant in time), rather than writing the vector as a magnitude times a direction, so that I wouldn't have to worry about differentiating the unit vector directly.

The magnitude of each of these vectors is manifestly positive \begin{eqnarray} |\mathbf{r}| &=& r \\ \left|\frac{d \mathbf{r}}{dt}\right| &=& \omega r \\ \left|\frac{d^2 \mathbf{r}}{dt^2}\right| &=& \omega^2 r \end{eqnarray} If you do things carefully like this, you will always find the magnitude of each vector is positive, for any motion $\mathbf{r}(t)$.

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