Teach Fzx Tuesday - Acceleration units

The units that we use for acceleration are stupid if we want our students to understand.

They constantly confound acceleration and velocity and forever forget the squared on that m/s.  A few years ago I switched over to "meters per second every second" and it has worked wonders.

I even add a a pause for emphasis - "meters per second ... each second" - and my students do it too. The "rate of change of velocity" is then a much more natural definition since we constantly deal with velocity units divided by time units.  

I don't like the slash since we only use it because it fits well on a line of typeface but anything's better than meters per second squared.  We can even make a simple change for units they can understand.

Yes, a simple change in units can change our students' understanding of physics.  That's just one example.