Meters Per Second to Mach (m/s to Ma)

1 meter per second equals 0.002938635415 Mach (rounded).

How to convert meters per second to Mach

To convert meters per second to Mach, multiply the number of meters per second by 0.002938635415. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply Mach by 340.294.

Mach = meters per second × 0.002938635415

Example: 10 meters per second = 0.02938635415 Mach.

Approximate value. Standards for the Mach varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.

About these units

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

Mach (Ma)

ScientificCurrent unitApproximate value

The speed of sound at sea level in standard conditions (15 °C): about 340.294 m/s or 1,225 km/h. The speed of sound varies with temperature and altitude.

Ernst Mach, the Austrian physicist and philosopher born in Moravia in 1838, never defined a unit of speed, yet the ratio carries his name. In 1887 he and Peter Salcher presented a paper on photographing processes in air caused by projectiles, including a shadowgraph of the bow shock around a supersonic bullet fired from a Werndl carbine. The ratio of flow speed to the local speed of sound was later named for him.

Mach is therefore a dimensionless number, not a fixed speed, and because the speed of sound depends on temperature, so does Mach 1. It is about 340 m/s (1,225 km/h) in dry air at 15 °C at sea level, 343 m/s at 20 °C, and about 295 m/s above 11 kilometers where the air is cold. Flight is called subsonic below 0.8, transonic from 0.8 to 1.2, supersonic from 1.2 to 5 and hypersonic from 5 to 10. On 14 October 1947 Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1 to Mach 1.06, reported as 361 m/s.

1 Mach = 340.294 meters per second (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Mach number; Wikipedia: Ernst Mach; Wikipedia: Speed of sound

Related conversions

See all speed units.