About Acceleration Converter
Acceleration Converter translates a rate of change of velocity between the four units you are most likely to meet: metres per second squared, the SI unit; feet per second squared, its imperial counterpart; g-force, used wherever acceleration is expressed as a multiple of Earth gravity; and the gal, a centimetre-per-second-squared unit that survives in geophysics and seismology.
The conversions are straight multiplications, because all four units share the same zero point — unlike temperature, there is no offset to worry about. One g-force is fixed at 9.80665 metres per second squared, the standard value for gravitational acceleration; one gal is exactly 0.01 metres per second squared, which is why a hundred gals equal one metre per second squared; and one foot per second squared is 0.3048 metres per second squared, since a foot is 0.3048 metres.
The unit you pick depends on the field you are working in. Physics and everyday engineering use metres per second squared; aviation and automotive work often quote g-force because it tells you directly how many times Earth gravity the occupants feel; and earthquake records still report ground acceleration in gals. The converter simply moves a number between those vocabularies.
How to use Acceleration Converter
- 1 Enter the acceleration value to convert.
- 2 Choose the unit it is expressed in — m/s², ft/s², g-force or gal.
- 3 Choose the unit you want and read the converted value.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly is a g-force?
It is acceleration expressed as a multiple of standard gravity, which is 9.80665 metres per second squared. One g is the acceleration you feel from Earth gravity at the surface, so two g means twice that pull.
What is a gal and where is it used?
A gal is one centimetre per second squared, equal to 0.01 metres per second squared. It is named after Galileo and still appears in seismology, where ground acceleration during earthquakes is reported in gals or milligals.
Why does one g equal 9.80665 and not 10?
Because 9.80665 metres per second squared is the internationally agreed standard value of gravitational acceleration. It is a fixed convention rather than a measurement, which keeps conversions between g-force and the SI unit exact.
Is this a simple ratio like other converters?
Yes. All four units share a common zero, so converting between them is pure multiplication with no offset. That makes the relationship linear in both directions.
Free, online, and private
Free to use
Acceleration Converter is completely free. There is no account to create, no login, and no hidden charge or usage limit.
Runs online in your browser
It is a free online tool that runs entirely in your browser. Nothing to download or install — open the page and start using it right away.
Your data stays private
All processing happens locally on your device. Your input is never uploaded, stored, or tracked, so it never leaves your browser.
How Acceleration Converter behaves in detail
These are the specifics of this implementation — the exact ranges, defaults and fixed settings you are working with.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Units covered | 4 — m/s², ft/s², standard gravity and Gal |
| Conversion basis | metre per second squared |
| Anchors | 1 ft/s² = 0.3048 m/s² · 1 g = 9.80665 m/s² · 1 Gal = 0.01 m/s² |
| g uses the standard value | 9.80665 is the fixed standard acceleration; the local value varies with latitude and altitude and is not applied here |
| Gal | the CGS unit, 0.01 m/s² — kept deliberately distinct from g rather than folded into it |
| Rounding | answers are cut to 8 decimal places, so 1 g → m/s² returns exactly 9.80665 while 1 m/s² → ft/s² stops at 3.2808399 |
| Default pair | m/s² → ft/s² |
Compiled from the implementation of this tool and checked against it by itoolnet.
What Acceleration Converter does not do
Knowing the edges of a tool saves more time than another list of its features. These are the cases where it will not do what you might expect.
- A single g-factor is applied everywhere. The standard 9.80665 is used for the g row, so a figure that came from a local gravity measurement — the accepted value at 45 degrees latitude, or the 9.832 used at the poles — is converted as though gravity were the same everywhere.
- The result is printed through Number.prototype.toFixed, which means large answers stay readable but very small ones lose their magnitude: rounding to eight decimals turns a value near 1e-9 of the target unit into a flat 0, with nothing on the page to say the number underflowed rather than being genuinely zero.
- Everything outside the four units is a two-step job. jerk (m/s³), angular acceleration, and the gravity figures specific to the Moon, Mars or any other body are absent, so a value given in any of them has to be moved through m/s² by hand before this converter becomes usable.
- The unit strings are what the page compares against, and they contain no normalisation. FT/S², Fts2 or a label copied out of another document is not matched, and an unmatched pair is returned as a plain 0 instead of an error — the only unusual output is the exponential form of the multiplier.
Tested and documented by itoolnet, the team that builds and maintains this site.