What the heck is measured in m2 / s2? (2024)

What the heck is measured in m2 / s2??

Can somebody tell me what m2 / s2 measures?? A square meter per squared second??

russ_watters said:

Measured? Nothing. But I suspect the question is really asking about what an energy equation means.

Well, it could be a measure of energy per unit mass (above post #3): J/kg = Nm/kg = kg m sec^-2 m kg^-1 = m^2/sec^2

AM

Andrew Mason said:

Well, it could be a measure of energy per unit mass: J/kg = Nm/kg = kg m sec^-2 m kg^-1 = m^2/sec^2

AM

dacruick said:

energy per unit mass!

mwahahaha

i'm sorry for necrobumping this old tread, but AM is actually right.

Using bernoulli's equations you can find out the loss of energy due to friction in joule/kg, which is the same as m2/s2.

A joule is the same as a Newton times meter, while a Newton is the force required to accelerate a mass of 1 kg by 1 meter per second squared. so if you write it out it becomes:

[itex]\frac{J}{kg}[/itex] = [itex]\frac{N*m}{kg}[/itex] = [itex]\frac{kg*m*m}{s²*kg}[/itex] =[itex]\frac{m²}{s²}[/itex]

so m2/s2 could refer to the loss of energy per kg due to friction. It's used mostly in hydrodynamics and aerodynamics. Probably also in thermodynamics.

johann1301 said:

Can somebody tell me what m2 / s2 measures?? A square meter per squared second?

dacruick said:

energy per unit mass

Which would make m^2 / s^2 an optional unit form for potential, such as gravitational potential. For example, for object close enough to Earth's surface that gravitational force can be considered constant, then gravitational potential = g h = (9.8 m / s^2) (h m) = 9.8 h m^2 / s^2.