In a video game, a ball moving at 0.6 meter/second collides with a wall. After the collision, the velocity of the ball changed to -0.4 meter/second. The collision takes 0.2 seconds to occur. What’s the acceleration of the ball during the collision? Use .

Explanation:

The acceleration of an object is equal to the rate of change of  velocity of the object.

Mathematically, it is given by:

where

u is the initial velocity

v is the final velocity

t is the time elapsed

For the ball in this problem:

u = 0.6 m/s

v = -0.4 m/s

t = 0.2 s

Therefore, the acceleration of the ball is:

and the negative sign indicates that the acceleration's direction is opposite to the direction of the initial velocity.