Feet Per Minute to Meters Per Second (ft/min to m/s)

1 foot per minute equals 0.00508 meters per second exactly.

1 foot per minute = 0.00508 meters per second

How to convert feet per minute to meters per second

To convert feet per minute to meters per second, multiply the number of feet per minute by 0.00508. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply meters per second by 196.8503937 (rounded).

meters per second = feet per minute × 0.00508

Example: 10 feet per minute = 0.0508 meters per second.

About these units

Foot Per Minute (ft/min)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

Exactly 0.00508 m/s. Used for climb rates in aviation.

Pilots in most ICAO member countries read their climb and descent in feet per minute, a convention kept even in otherwise metric countries. The vertical speed indicator in an aircraft such as the Robinson R22 helicopter shows ft/min, and the Wikipedia article on rate of climb quotes a Cessna 172 at maximum weight climbing at 721 ft/min, which is 3.66 m/s.

The arithmetic checks out: 721 multiplied by 0.00508 m/s per ft/min gives 3.663 m/s. The conversion factor is exact, because a foot is 0.3048 m and a minute is 60 s, so 1 ft/min is 0.3048 divided by 60, or 0.00508 m/s. Variometers are sometimes calibrated in knots instead, where 1 kn is about 0.514 m/s.

1 foot per minute = 0.00508 meters per second (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Rate of climb; NIST SP 811 Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Meter Per Second (m/s)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI unit of speed. Walking pace is about 1.4 m/s; a sprinter reaches roughly 10 m/s.

Official standing arrived in 1960, when the CGPM established the SI and made the meter per second the unit for speed and velocity. Before that, feet per second, miles per hour and knots were more common, depending on region and trade. One proposal gave 1 m/s its own name, the benz, after Karl Benz, but it was rejected and never caught on, so the unit is still written as a plain ratio of meter to second.

The meter is now defined by the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second, and the second by the vibration of caesium atoms, so the meter per second rests on two physical standards. Exactly 3.6 km/h make 1 m/s, and it equals about 2.2369 mph or 1.9438 knots. For scale, sound travels at about 343 m/s in dry air at 20 °C, and Chuck Yeager's Bell X-1 reached about 361 m/s, Mach 1.06, in October 1947. Physics and engineering use the unit almost exclusively.

The meter per second is the reference unit for speed on this site.

Sources: Wikipedia: Metre per second; NIST: the meter and the SI redefinition; Wikipedia: Sound barrier

Related conversions

See all speed units.