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  # A bowling ball with a negative initial velocity slows down as it rolls down the lane toward the pins Is the bowling ball's acceleration positive or negative as it rolls toward the pins?
  
  Updated: 12/12/2022
  
  Wiki User
  
  14y ago
  
  In these situations, you usually define one direction as being positive and the other as negative. In this problem, the question does this for us: it clearly tells us that when the ball is moving down the lane, its velocity is negative. "Down the lane" is the negative direction.
  
  Average acceleration is give by
  
  a_ave = Δv/Δt
  
  where Δv is a change in velocity and Δt is elapsed time.
  
  Δv = v_final - v_initial
  
  In this problem, the ball "slowed down," but did not change direction. This means that the NUMBER associated with "v" got smaller (5 ... 4 ... 3 ...) but the SIGN (-) did not change.
  
  I hope it makes sense, then, that "v_final" was a smaller (slower) number with a negative sign (moving down the lane) while "v_initial" was a larger (faster) number with a negative sign (moving down the lane).
  
  The subtraction of a large negative number from a small one (like, for instance, -4 - [-10]) is a POSITIVE number whose value is given by the difference (+6).
  
  So Δv is positive, and Δt is ALWAYS positive (no matter what).
  Therefore a_ave, the quotient of two positive numbers, will be positive.
  
  Wiki User
  
  14y ago
  
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  Q: A bowling ball with a negative initial velocity slows down as it rolls down the lane toward the pins Is the bowling ball's acceleration positive or negative as it rolls toward the pins?
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