What the heck is measured in m2 / s2??

johann1301

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

sophiecentaur

The rate of change in the growth of an area?

dacruick

energy per unit mass!

Black Integra

what ever.
I ain't even important.

russ_watters

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

rcgldr

My guess is that it's the velocity component for 1 Joule of energy, 1 Joule = 1 kg m² / s ², or kinetic energy of an object = 1/2 mass v² (with v² stated as m² / s² ). ... or it could be related to centripetal acceleration, a = v² / r.

Andrew Mason

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

dacruick

mwahahaha

Zimmah

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.

rcgldr

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.