# When a body completes one revolution around a circular path will its acceleration be 0?

When a body is moving in a circular motion the acceleration keeps changing, will it be zero when it comes back to the same point it started from(will the average acceleration be 0?)

• Are you thinking of circular motion with constant angular velocity? Please clarify. – flaudemus Mar 4 at 7:20
• @flaudemus. As long as the body is still in motion, it's accelerating direction-wise. The issue of angular velocity change is trivia, so wether it does or not, the rule of acceleration still holds. – TechDroid Mar 4 at 7:26
• If you wanna know about avg. acceleration, it will be $0$ for uniform circular motion after one rotation but instantaneous acceleration won't ever be zero for uniform circular motion. – user8718165 Mar 4 at 7:30

Acceleration is a vector quantity, meaning it operates both in the form of magnitude change and direction change. If the velocity of a body is continuously changing in magnitude or direction, it's said to be accelerating. In a circular motion scenario, the velocity might be both changing in magnitude (as in angular acceleration $$\alpha$$) or in direction (as in centripetal acceleration $$a$$ pointing towards the center). To to answer the question, a body still in a circular motion is always accelerating direction-wise.