What is foot per second?

Foot per second is a unit of speed in imperial and US customary systems. It is used in ballistics, sports science, and engineering calculations that rely on US customary units.

Real-world uses

Feet per second is used in ballistics for bullet muzzle velocities (e.g., 2,800 fps for a rifle round), aerospace engineering for aircraft approach speeds, and fluid dynamics in American engineering contexts. Elevator speeds are sometimes specified in ft/s.

History

Feet per second has been used in English-language engineering since the 18th century, particularly in artillery and ballistics. It remains the standard velocity unit in American firearms and aerospace industries despite the broader shift toward metric units.

Common mistakes

Confusing feet per second with miles per hour. 1 ft/s ≈ 0.682 mph, so they are quite different. Also, using fps as an abbreviation for both "feet per second" and "frames per second" creates ambiguity in technical documents.

What is mile per minute?

Mile per minute is a unit of speed equal to 60 miles per hour. It is occasionally used in motorsport, aviation briefings, and quick calculations for high-speed travel in imperial measurement systems.

Real-world uses

Miles per minute is occasionally used in aviation for expressing high speeds in a more intuitive way than mph for American audiences. An airliner cruising at about 575 mph is traveling roughly 9.6 miles per minute, making distance-to-destination calculations easier.

History

Miles per minute has never been widely adopted as a formal unit but emerged informally in American aviation contexts where expressing high speeds in mph yields very large numbers. It provides a more intuitive sense of how quickly distance is covered.

Common mistakes

Confusing miles per minute with miles per hour—1 mi/min = 60 mph. This is a speed unit rarely seen in everyday use, so people may misinterpret the scale of the numbers involved.

When is this conversion used?

Converting foot per second to mile per minute is useful in the speed domain when comparing values across different measurement standards or applying formulas that require a specific unit.

Worked examples

1 foot per second = 0.01136364 mile per minute

1 mile per minute = 26.8224 metre per second

How to convert foot per second to mile per minute

To convert foot per second to mile per minute, multiply the value by 0.01136364.

To convert mile per minute back to foot per second, multiply by 88.

Measurement standards

The SI unit of speed is metres per second (m/s), a derived unit requiring no independent definition. The knot is defined as exactly one nautical mile (1,852 metres) per hour and is sanctioned for maritime and aeronautical navigation by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Did you know?

The fastest human-made object is the Parker Solar Probe, which reached 635,266 km/h (about 176 km/s) in 2024 during a close pass of the Sun — fast enough to travel from New York to Tokyo in under a minute.

Quick reference: foot per second to mile per minute

foot per second	mile per minute
0.1	0.00113636
0.5	0.00568182
1	0.01136364
2	0.02272727
5	0.05681818
10	0.11363636
25	0.28409091
50	0.56818182
100	1.13636364
250	2.84090909
500	5.68181818
1,000	11.36363636

Common values

	foot per second	mile per minute
Walking speed	4.59317585 foot per second	0.05219518 mile per minute
City speed limit	45.60367454 foot per second	0.51822357 mile per minute
Highway driving	102.69028871 foot per second	1.1669351 mile per minute
Commercial aircraft	820.20997375 foot per second	9.32056788 mile per minute
Speed of sound (sea level)	1,116.43700787 foot per second	12.68678418 mile per minute

Available Speed units

More foot per second conversions

Assumption: Mach uses an approximate sea-level reference (about 340.29 m/s).