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 #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#