Question #00a80

1 Answer
Jun 12, 2017

The quantity g is the acceleration due to gravity near Earth's surface, 9.8 "m/s"^2.

The fact that it has the units "m/s"^2 further indicates that this is an acceleration. If it were a force, there would be a mass component as well, and it would have units of "kg"*"m/s"^2, a.k.a. newtons, "N".

The g value has no mass component, which basically means that it is independent of the mass of the object (sound familiar, from Newton's experiments?)

If a question wants an answer in g's, it's simply asking for that object's acceleration expressed as a multiple (or a fraction) of g. For example, 43.5 "m/s"^2 is the same as

(43"m/s"^2)/(9.8"m/s"^2) = 4.4g