Metre per second

The metre per second (also spelled meter per second) is a unit used to measure speed and velocity. It tells us how far something travels in one second. For example, if a car moves at a speed of 60 metre per second, it means the car travels 60 metres in just one second!

In science and engineering, metre per second is very important. It helps scientists and engineers describe how fast things move, whether it's a car on the road, a plane in the sky, or even electrons moving in a wire. This unit is part of the International System of Units, which is used all around the world to make sure everyone measures things the same way.

One amazing fact is that metre per second is related to the speed of light. According to the definition of a metre, moving at 1 metre per second is exactly 1 divided by 299,792,458 of how fast light travels. The common symbols for this unit are m/s, m·s⁻¹, m s⁻¹, or ⁠m/s⁠.

Conversions

A speed of 1 metre per second is the same as 3.6 kilometres per hour. It is also about 3.28 feet per second, 2.24 miles per hour, and 1.94 knots.

One foot per second equals exactly 0.3048 metres per second. One mile per hour equals exactly 0.44704 metres per second. And one kilometre per hour equals exactly 0.27 metres per second.

History and Standardization

The metre per second became the official unit for measuring speed and velocity in 1960 when the International System of Units (SI) was created by the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM). Before this, people used different units like feet per second, miles per hour, and knots depending on where they lived and what they needed.

This unit comes from two basic SI units: the metre for length and the second for time. The metre was once based on the size of the Earth but is now defined by how far light travels in a very small part of a second. The second is defined by the vibrations of caesium atoms. Because it is accurate and simple, the metre per second is used in science to measure speed and velocity.

Relation to other measures

The benz, named after Karl Benz, was suggested as a name for one metre per second. It got some support, especially from Germany, but it wasn’t chosen as the official unit and isn’t used much.

The square of metres per second, or square metre per square second, helps measure something called gravitational potential.

Unicode character

The symbol for metre per second is a special character in Unicode, located at code point U+33A7 ㎧ SQUARE M OVER S. This helps computers show the unit correctly in different places.