Foot per Second to Meter per Hour
ft/s
m/s
Conversion History
| Conversion | Reuse | Delete |
|---|---|---|
1 ft/s (Foot per Second) → 1097.28 m/s (Meter per Hour) Just now |
Quick Reference Table (Foot per Second to Meter per Hour)
| Foot per Second (ft/s) | Meter per Hour (m/s) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1,097.28 |
| 5 | 5,486.4 |
| 10 | 10,972.8 |
| 100 | 109,728 |
| 1,000 | 1,097,280 |
| 1,125 | 1,234,440 |
| 5,280 | 5,793,638.4 |
About Foot per Second (ft/s)
The foot per second (ft/s) is an imperial unit of speed used in ballistics, fluid dynamics, and some US engineering contexts. One foot per second equals 0.3048 m/s or 0.682 mph. It is the natural unit when working with feet-based distance calculations — describing river current speed, muzzle velocity in fps, or fall rates. The unit is common in US aviation (rate of climb in feet per minute, convertible from ft/s) and in acoustics, where the speed of sound is approximately 1,125 ft/s at sea level.
The speed of sound in air is about 1,125 ft/s at sea level. A slow river current is roughly 2–5 ft/s.
About Meter per Hour (m/s)
The meter per hour (m/h) is an extremely slow unit of speed, rarely used in everyday contexts but useful for expressing very gradual movement — geological processes, biological growth, or slow industrial feed rates. One meter per hour is about 0.001 km/h or 0.00028 m/s. Glaciers move at roughly 100–3,000 m/h (0.1–3 m per hour is typical). Snails travel at about 50 m/h. The unit provides a convenient scale for phenomena that would otherwise require small decimals in m/s or km/h.
A garden snail moves at roughly 50 m/h. A glacier advances at 100–1,000 m/h depending on the ice sheet.
Foot per Second – Frequently Asked Questions
How fast does a golf ball come off the clubface in ft/s?
A professional golfer's driver launches the ball at roughly 250 ft/s (170 mph). An amateur averages about 190–220 ft/s. The PGA Tour record ball speed is around 330 ft/s (225 mph), set by long-drive competitors using specialised equipment. For comparison, a tennis serve reaches about 180 ft/s and a baseball pitch about 150 ft/s — making a driven golf ball one of the fastest objects in non-motorised sport.
How fast does a skydiver fall in ft/s?
A skydiver in a stable spread-eagle position reaches terminal velocity at approximately 120 mph (176 ft/s) after about 10 seconds of freefall. In a head-down dive position, terminal velocity can reach 200+ mph (293+ ft/s). With a deployed parachute, descent slows to about 10–17 ft/s (7–12 mph) for a safe landing.
Why do aircraft measure vertical speed in ft/min instead of ft/s?
Vertical speed indicators in aircraft (VSI) use feet per minute because typical climb and descent rates produce sensible numbers — a commercial aircraft climbs at 1,500–2,500 ft/min, and descends at 300–500 ft/min for approach. In ft/s these would be 25–42 and 5–8 respectively — workable, but ft/min produces rounder pilot-friendly numbers for the ranges encountered.
What is a foot per second squared and why does it matter?
Foot per second squared (ft/s²) is the imperial unit of acceleration. Standard gravitational acceleration is 32.174 ft/s² — meaning a falling object gains 32 ft/s of speed every second. This is used in US aerospace and artillery calculations. Engineers must be careful not to confuse ft/s (speed) with ft/s² (acceleration), as the units look similar but represent entirely different physical quantities.
How does ft/s relate to the knot?
One knot is approximately 1.6878 ft/s (or 1 nautical mile per hour). This means 100 knots is about 169 ft/s. Aircraft airspeed is measured in knots by international convention, but US military aircraft radar tracks and some engineering documents also express speeds in ft/s for compatibility with imperial-unit weapon system specifications.
Meter per Hour – Frequently Asked Questions
How fast does a glacier move in meters per hour?
Most valley glaciers advance at 20–200 m/h (0.5–5 m/day). Surge glaciers — which periodically accelerate — can reach 1,000–10,000 m/h for months at a time. The Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland holds the record for the fastest sustained glacier flow at roughly 4,600 m/h (46 m/day). For context, that's still far slower than a garden snail.
How fast does hair grow in m/h?
Human scalp hair grows at roughly 15 cm per year — about 0.017 mm/hour, or 0.000017 m/h. Nails grow at about half that rate. At this scale, even the m/h unit is too large; growth biologists use mm/day or cm/month. The fastest-growing human tissue is bone marrow, not hair.
What moves at around 1 meter per hour?
Some lava flows on gently sloping terrain advance at about 1 m/h. Tectonic plates move at 2.5–15 cm/year — far below even 1 m/h. Bread rising in a warm kitchen expands at a few mm/hour. Corrosion front advancement in protected steel structures can be tracked in mm or cm per year.
Is m/h the same as m/hr?
m/h and m/hr are both used for meters per hour — neither is an official SI notation, since the SI symbol for hour is h (not hr). The correct SI notation is m/h. In engineering documentation, m/hr appears frequently as a stylistic choice, particularly in American engineering texts that prefer "hr" over "h" for legibility.
How do you convert m/h to mm/day?
Multiply by 24,000. One m/h = 1,000 mm/h × 24 h/day = 24,000 mm/day. This conversion is useful in hydrology (soil permeability is measured in mm/day) and biology (plant growth, wound healing rates). A glacier moving at 100 m/h would be advancing 2,400,000 mm/day — or 2.4 km/day, which is an exceptionally fast surge.