Acceleration Converter

Acceleration measures how quickly velocity changes with time. The SI unit is the meter per second squared (m/s²).

This converter changes units for a known acceleration. It does not calculate acceleration from velocity and time or solve force, motion, free-fall, braking, or projectile problems.

Speed measures how quickly distance changes with time and commonly uses m/s. Acceleration measures how quickly velocity changes and commonly uses m/s². They are different physical quantities and cannot be directly converted.

One foot is exactly 0.3048 meter and one inch is exactly 0.0254 meter. Those exact length definitions provide the ft/s² and in/s² factors.

The symbol g here means the defined standard-gravity acceleration unit, not grams. One g is exactly 9.80665 m/s² by convention. Actual local gravitational acceleration varies slightly, but this converter always uses the defined standard value.

The Gal, named after Galileo, equals 1 cm/s² or 0.01 m/s². A milligal is one-thousandth of a Gal and is often used for gravity measurements. Capitalization matters: Gal is not the gallon abbreviation gal.

These units describe a velocity change, expressed in km/h or mph, occurring each second. They are not the same as km/h² or mi/h², which have much smaller factors and are intentionally not included in this focused converter.

Negative values are valid and indicate direction relative to a chosen coordinate system. Whether a negative acceleration represents slowing down depends on the direction of the object's velocity.