How do you calculate free fall acceleration?

Answer 1

The only thing you have to figure out is what planet the object is falling on.

As long as you stay on the same planet, free-fall acceleration is always the

same. It's called the acceleration of gravity on that planet. On earth, it's

9.8 meters (or 32.2 feet) per second per second. That means that if an

object is in free-fall near the earth's surface, its speed keeps growing,

and at any time, it's always 9.8 meters per second (32.2 feet per second)

faster than it was 1 second earlier. It doesn't even matter how heavy the

falling object is ... everything falls with the same acceleration. That means

that if you drop a small stone and a gigantic boulder out of an airplane at

the same time ... or a feather and a Bowling ball ... everything hits the ground

at the same time.

That's the way gravity works. Whenever you see something that doesn't work

out that way, it's strictly a matter of the air that it had to fall through.