A skydiver stepping out at 13,000 feet accelerates at 32.2 ft/s² — until air resistance catches up and terminal velocity caps the fall around 120 mph belly-down. Free fall is motion under gravity alone, and two formulas tell the whole story: distance fallen equals one-half times gravity times time squared (d = ½gt²), and velocity equals gravity times time (v = gt). Double the fall time and you fall four times farther but only twice as fast.

Galileo's famous insight was that mass cancels out — a bowling ball and a feather fall together in a vacuum, as Apollo 15's hammer-and-feather drop proved on the Moon. On Earth, air drag spoils the purity, which is why the calculator's Terminal Velocity (v) field matters: it is the speed where drag balances weight and acceleration stops.

This calculator runs both fall formulas from your inputs. Type the fall time in seconds in the Fall Time (t) box and gravity — 32.2 ft/s² on Earth, or 9.8 m/s² — in the Gravitational Acceleration (g) box. The Fall Distance (d) box reports how far the object dropped and the Terminal Velocity (v) box the speed reached. Three seconds of true free fall covers 145 feet and reaches 97 ft/s — about 66 mph, roughly a highway-speed plunge.

With the pre-filled defaults — Fall Time (t) 3 s, Gravitational Acceleration (g) 9.80665 m/s² — the Free Fall Calculator returns Fall Distance (d) 44.1299 m, Terminal Velocity (v) 29.4200 m/s. Change any input and those results update instantly, so you can see exactly how each number you enter moves the answer.