How does the unit used to measure acceleration actually work?

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The unit to measure speed is m/s which in a straightforward manner implies that x metres is covered per second however the unit for acceleration is m/s^2 which is kind of making it difficult to understand how it works..

I had this thought in the middle of a physics test and have been pondering ever since. Would be great if someone could eli5.

In: Physics

16 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I always like to think of it as follows:
Say you’re in a rocket that’s accelerating. There’s a speedometer on the dash, and your copilot keeps calling out the speed. The first second he says “10m/s”. One second later he says “15 m/s”. One second after that he calls out “20 m/s”.

This means that every second the number he’s reading out increases by 5 m/s. In other words, it changes by 5 m/s, per second. Or (5m/s)/s.

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