Knots to Feet Per Minute (kn to ft/min)

1 knot equals 101.2685914 feet per minute (rounded).

1 knot = 101.2685914 feet per minute

How to convert knots to feet per minute

To convert knots to feet per minute, multiply the number of knots by 101.2685914. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply feet per minute by 0.009874730022 (rounded).

feet per minute = knots × 101.2685914

Example: 10 knots = 1,012.685914 feet per minute.

About these units

Knot (kn)

NauticalCurrent unit

One nautical mile per hour, exactly 1.852 km/h. The unit of speed for ships, aircraft and wind.

Knots in a rope really were counted. Before the mid-nineteenth century, sailors threw a weighted wooden board, the chip, off the stern on a line called the log-line. The line carried knots at regular intervals, and a sailor counted how many passed through his fingers while another timed the run with a sandglass. William Bourne's A Regiment for the Sea, printed in 1574, is the first known description, and many ships spaced knots 8 fathoms, about 14.6 meters, apart with a glass of roughly half a minute.

Today a knot is one nautical mile per hour, exactly 1,852 meters per hour, about 1.151 mph or 0.514 m/s. A ship making 1 knot along a meridian covers about one minute of latitude per hour, which is why charts and the unit fit together. It is not an SI unit, and the symbol is kn, though kt is common in aviation. Saying knots per hour is wrong, since that would describe acceleration. The US moved civil aircraft standards to nautical miles and knots in 1969, and winds and currents are also quoted in them.

1 knot = 0.5144444444 meters per second (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Knot (unit); Wikipedia: Chip log; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

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

Related conversions

See all speed units.