Free fall calculator
Find how long something takes to fall from a height and how fast it is going at the bottom, or the height for a fall time.
That's about the same as a 10 m diving board. Without air it falls in 1.428 s and hits at 50.42 km/h (31.33 mph).
What it means
How high is that drop?
In a vacuum on Earth (g = 9.80665 m/s²). Air resistance matters for long falls: a skydiver tops out near 200 km/h.
Every unit
That fall in every unit
Learn
Three things worth knowing
-
5 m in the first second
After t seconds an object has fallen about 5 t² m: 5 m after 1 s, 20 m after 2 s, 45 m after 3 s.
-
Galileo’s ramps
Galileo rolled balls down ramps around 1604 and found distance grows with the square of time; the Leaning Tower story is probably a legend.
-
Heavier is not faster
Without air, a hammer and a feather land together, as Apollo 15’s David Scott showed on the Moon in 1971.
Shortcuts
Popular drop conversions
Background
About free fall
Without air, everything falls with the same acceleration, g = 9.81 m/s²: the distance grows with the square of time, h = ½ g t², and the speed with time, v = g t. A 10 m drop takes 1.43 s and ends at 50 km/h.
Real falls add drag: a falling person stops speeding up near 200 km/h, a raindrop near 30 km/h.