# Acceleration of a free-falling body

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceleration-of-a-free-falling-body/508273>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 30, 2009, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceleration-of-a-free-falling-body/508273 "2009-08-30T18:29:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![vd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b19c9b/32.png) [@vd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vd)\
**Post date:** [August 31, 2009, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acceleration-of-a-free-falling-body/508273/21 "2009-08-31T15:39:25Z")

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> [@Indistinguishable](#):
>
> I wouldn’t call dA/dt “the rate of acceleration” anymore than I would call acceleration itself “the rate of speed”. I would call dA/dt “the rate of change of acceleration”.

Jerk! 😉

It’s common in everyday English (“The suspect was driving at a high rate of speed.”), but ambiguous and a bad idea when talking about physics, where “rate” strongly implies a derivative there somewhere. Not that this thread is going to crash any Mars landers.

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