Posted by Brad Paul on August 30, 2002 at 12:36:00:
In Reply to: hints... posted by T.Gracken on August 30, 2002 at 11:50:07:
: and d2T/dt2 (second derivative) will give agular acceleration.
One needs to be careful here. You are correct for circular motion with
your second derivative for the angular acceleration, but this is not
true in a general case. The root of the problem comes from the fact
that the unit vectors in polar coordinates are a function of
position. If I have time this weekend I'll try to put together a
complete explanation.