Feet per Second to Meters per Second Converter

Feet per Second to Meters per Second

Convert feet per second (ft/s) to meters per second (m/s). Both measure velocity, and the conversion comes up in driving, aviation, sports work.

The Formula

`` meters per second = feet per second × 0.3048 feet per second = meters per second × 3.28083989501 `

One feet per second is 0.3048 meters per second, and one meters per second is 3.2808 feet per second.

Conversion Table

Feet per Second	Meters per Second
1 ft/s	0.3048 m/s
2 ft/s	0.6096 m/s
5 ft/s	1.524 m/s
10 ft/s	3.048 m/s
25 ft/s	7.62 m/s
50 ft/s	15.24 m/s
100 ft/s	30.48 m/s
500 ft/s	152.4 m/s
1,000 ft/s	304.8 m/s

The Other Direction

Meters per Second	Feet per Second
1 m/s	3.2808 ft/s
2 m/s	6.5617 ft/s
5 m/s	16.4042 ft/s
10 m/s	32.8084 ft/s
25 m/s	82.021 ft/s
50 m/s	164.042 ft/s
100 m/s	328.084 ft/s
500 m/s	1,640.42 ft/s
1,000 m/s	3,280.84 ft/s

What Each Unit Is

Feet per Second (ft/s) — feet travelled per second, equal to 0.3048 m/s exactly. Used in US ballistics, fluid dynamics and some aviation contexts.

Meters per Second (m/s) — the SI unit of speed — metres travelled per second. The coherent SI derived unit, used throughout physics and engineering.

A Sense of Scale

• A pitched baseball leaves the hand near 130 ft/s
• Walking is about 4.6 ft/s
• Walking is 1.4 m/s
• A sprinter peaks near 12 m/s
• Sound travels at 343 m/s

Doing It in Your Head

Multiply by 3, then divide by 10. That is off by 1.57% — close enough to judge a distance, a weight or a price, and not close enough to sign off on a drawing.

Exact	Mental shortcut
3.048 m/s	3 m/s
30.48 m/s	30 m/s

Precision

The factor 0.3048 is rounded. For engineering work carry more digits than the table above, and round only at the end — rounding at each step compounds.

In Code

`javascript const footPerSecondToMeterPerSecond = (value) => value * 0.3048; ``

Where This Conversion Comes Up

• Driving
• Aviation
• Sports
• Shipping
• Weather

How Many Decimals Do You Need?

Rounding the factor costs accuracy, and how much depends on the factor. Converting 137 ft/s with the factor truncated at each decimal place:

Decimals kept	Factor	137 ft/s becomes	Error
0	0	0	100.0000%
1	0.3	41.1	1.5748%
2	0.3	41.1	1.5748%
3	0.305	41.785	0.0656%
4	0.3048	41.7576	—

A rule that holds for any conversion: round once, at the end. Rounding the factor and then multiplying compounds the error through every subsequent calculation, while carrying full precision and rounding the final answer does not.

The right number of significant figures is set by your input, not by the converter. If you measured feet per second to three significant figures, the answer in meters per second is only good to three — writing more digits claims precision the measurement never had.