What term describes the speed of an object in a specific direction?

• A. Velocity
• B. Speed
• C. Acceleration
• D. Momentum

Answer: (A)

Velocity describes how fast something is moving and in what direction. Speed alone only tells you how fast, without any information about direction, so it’s a scalar. Velocity combines both magnitude and direction, making it a vector quantity. That’s why it’s the term used for the speed of an object in a specific direction. For example, a car moving at 30 m/s north has a velocity of 30 m/s north. Acceleration, by contrast, is about how velocity changes over time, not the current motion itself, and momentum is mass times velocity, a measure of motion, not the directional speed alone.