How is acceleration of falling objects affected by gravity?

1 Answer
Oct 3, 2014

In the absence of gravity or other forces, objects wouldn't accelerate. There would be no falling. In fact, you'd have a difficult time saying which direction was down.

Those semantics aside, objects near the earth accelerate at a rate of about 9.81 ms2. If an object starts out not moving and is allowed to fall, one second later it will be moving at 9.81 ms. After two seconds it will be moving 19.62 ms.

The velocity of a falling object (v) depends on the time it has been falling (t), the acceleration of gravity (g), and the velocity it had at time zero (v0).

v=gt+v0