Kilometers Per Minute to Meters Per Second (km/min to m/s)

1 kilometer per minute equals 16.66666667 meters per second (rounded).

1 kilometer per minute = 16.66666667 meters per second

How to convert kilometers per minute to meters per second

To convert kilometers per minute to meters per second, multiply the number of kilometers per minute by 16.66666667. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply meters per second by 0.06.

meters per second = kilometers per minute × 16.66666667

Example: 10 kilometers per minute = 166.6666667 meters per second.

About these units

Kilometer Per Minute (km/min)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One kilometer per minute is 60 km/h.

Racehorses and greyhounds give this unit a memorable benchmark. Wikipedia lists the top speed of a thoroughbred racehorse or racing greyhound as about 17 m/s, and multiplying by 60 gives 1,020 meters per minute, or 1.02 km/min. A round figure of one kilometer per minute is therefore 60 km/h, a pace such animals roughly reach in a sprint.

One kilometer per minute equals 1,000 m divided by 60 s, or about 16.67 m/s. Its main appeal is mental arithmetic: a vehicle at 60 km/h covers one kilometer every minute, so distances and times can be read off almost directly. The more common road unit, km/h, only replaced the French myriameter per hour during the nineteenth century, with the compound in use in the United States by 1866.

1 kilometer per minute = 16.66666667 meters per second (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Orders of magnitude (speed); Wikipedia: Kilometres per hour

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.