What is angular velocity ?

As we have seen in this post an object undergoing circular motion has an angular displacement.

Hence the object will also have an angular velocity.

You will recall that velocity is the rate of change of displacement.

Let us look at an example of an object that is undergoing circular motion.

Fig 1                                              Fig 2                                                           

In fig 1 above a person moves in a circular path moving from A to B.

Thus the person can have an angular displacement θ in a time t.

We can thus calculate the angular velocity according to the equation below:

What if the person completes one complete turn?

Then the angular displacement will be 360^o or 2π rad.

The time taken to perform the complete turn will be the time period denoted by the letter T.

Thus the angular velocity will be calculated using the following equation: