Question

How is acceleration of falling objects affected by gravity?

Answer 1

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 `m/s^2`. If an object starts out not moving and is allowed to fall, one second later it will be moving at 9.81 `m/s`. After two seconds it will be moving 19.62 `m/s`.

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 (`v_0`).

`v = g*t + v_0`