by SmarterThanKnight » Sat May 07, 2005 2:16 am
Although it's surely too late for poor David and his physics class... I feel obligated to correct Mr Knight's advice on "converting" m/s^2 to m/s for the sake of the rest of the 'net. It's sad, but dumb losers that stll live with their parents (like Knight) tend to be the ones giving out the bulk of the advice on the on the 'net. Let this be a lesson kiddies...
You can't convert m/s^2 to m/s... they're not the same quantity.
You can calculate m/s from m/s^2 if you have some additional information... which I'm sure you do if this is a physics problem.
m/s/s (or m/s^2... same thing) is a measure of acceleration or change in velocity... m/s is simply a unit of velocity (well it's really speed since we're working in 1 dimension). Anyway, if you want to get a speed from constant acceleration... you need to know two things the inital speed (can be positive or negative) and the time over which the acceleration occured (in units of seconds for this case). The formula is as follows:
Vf = Vi + A*t
where:
Vf is the final speed/velocity
Vi is the initial speed/velocity
A is the acceleration (m/s/s)
t is the time over which the acceleration occured
Be sure to use common units... in this case meters (m) and seconds (s)... and refrain from listening to advice from people like Knight. A good portion of his "answers" on this site are either over-simplified or just plain wrong.
ciao.
-c