If you are sittin on a bucket on earth would your acceleration be constant or variable?

Question

accelreation is velocity per unit time. so speed is a scalar and velocity is a vector where do you find constanct acceleration?

Clarificatio= isnt the earth accelerating thru space and we with it including the bucket?

Answer 1

You are accelerated by the ground in a direction parallel to the ground to maintain your circular path around the earth's axis. The magnitude is constant but the direction changes as the earth rotates.

The earth is continually accelerating toward the sun to maintain its elliptical orbit. Additional accelerations occur because of interaction with the gravitational fields of the moon and the other planets.

Our solar system is moving through space within our galaxy, moving in a roughly circular orbit about the center of mass of the galaxy. Occasionally it is affected by the gravitational fields of neighboring stars.

Our Milky Way galaxy is moving through space at about 600km/sec and occasionally is affected by the gravitational fields of neighboring galaxies.

The net result is a complex path through the universe, and you are being accelerated to follow that path. You are constantly being accelerated but your acceleration is never constant.

Answer 2

In simple days of Newtonian mechanics, you would have a simple answer... however...
Constant acceleration could only happen in a vacuum where you had nothing to stop or impede or change your acceleration due to something like gravity - some 'force ' or other MUST be used to gain speed constantly ... If you are in a rocket, constant acceleration would be like turning on the engines and burning fuel to constantly increase speed, which, would burn up your fuel at some point. However, if you let gravity do the work, say fall towards the sun from the distant orbital path, you would, in newtonian physics, constantly gain speed until you hit the sun.
In Einstienian or the new Stringy Universe M theory equations, you get all sorts of changes, but the general increase in speed would still be there - as you were plummeting to the surface of the sun in a fireball caused by nuclear and cosmic particles hitting you, you " could" sit and argue the finer points of old physics versus the new physics, however, you would probably have other things on your mind.
Sitting on the earth you are constantly changing your speed, but not in the classic Newtonian sense - the earth is round, so that you are not moving in a straight line, but rather a circle, say 1000 miles an hour around the centre. The earth is spinning around the sun, hundreds of miles an hour in a curve. If you are spinning in the forward motion of the earths orbit, you are moving S speed around the sun plus E speed around the center of the earth.
If you spin around the other side ( day / night ) then you move
S - E, and this ratio is changing constantly, so that your speed is constantly increasing and decreasing 24 hours a day ... AND,
the sun is moving around the center of the galaxy, the milky way at a few thousand miles a second, so that the earth's orbit around the sun is G speed around the galaxy +/- S +/- E, and again, this is on a curve, so that it is constantly changing. AND, the galaxy is moving at so many thousand miles a second thru the universe, so that your speed, sitting still, on the surface of the earth, is
U ( speed of galaxy ) +/- G +/- S +/- E . all of which are curves, so that there is not a single straight line anywhere, which , according to the ancient, newtonian primitives, would mean constantly changing acceleration or, change in speed/direction vectors... = U +/- G +/- S =/- E
As you read this you are travelling in a tremendously wobbly path in loops and circles bouncing around at many thousands of miles per second.
Newton was not particularly taking this into consideration. Old textbooks would state, depending if you were in grade 5 or grade 10 or 3rd year university, that you had Zero velocity, Zero speed, and zero acceleration, sitting still on the surface of the earth, that you had a straight line vector of 1000 miles an hour speed and zero acceleration, and that you had velocity on a curve with constant change in direction with acceleration due to curvature. None are EXACTLY true, taking into consideration U, G, S, and E, and the continual change in the relationship between them.
If you get into the Stringy Universe, M Theory Branes, 11 dimensions, and the equations of Ed Witten, and his experiments on the Large Hadride Collider at Cern, all the simplistic equations suddenly become just that - simplistic !

Answer 3

Looking at it from a reference frame outside the Earth, and neglecting the acceleration of the Earth around the Sun and the solar system and the galaxy and so on, my acceleration would be uniform centripetal acceleration, that is acceleration toward the centre of the Earth that is combined with perpendicular motion that results in a circular path at uniform speed (every 23 hours and 56 minutes).

So the speed is constant but the acceleration vector is constantly changing, maintaining the same magnitude but in a changing direction.

Answer 4

If you aren't moving, then your speed and acceleration both equal zero, no? If you're looking for some other answer, then I think you need to rewrite your question. Something does look weird in your question, I have no idea why you're even mentioning a bucket.

The force of gravity is constantly pulling us towards the center of the earth, but if the surface of the earth prevents us from moving, the acceleration will be zero.

Answer 5

There are people sitting on a bucket daily in International Space Station, and will venture they get their constant acceleration from OJ or coffee. In Physics seem your term constant acceleration. may not exist by definition. Not Physics major so do not know if you made typing error, or you are referring to principle not known.