What Is Foot per Hour (ft/h)?
Foot per hour is a speed unit. It tells how many feet something moves in one hour. It is a very slow speed and is not used very often in daily life.
Definition
One foot per hour means an object travels one foot of distance in one full hour of time.
So, if a snail moved at 1 ft/h, after one hour it would be 1 foot from where it started.
This unit connects:
- Distance measured in feet
- Time measured in hours
Speed in ft/h = distance in feet divided by time in hours.
History / Origin
The unit comes from two older ideas:
- Foot is an old length unit used in English speaking countries. It was based long ago on the size of a human foot.
- Hour is a time unit that has been used for thousands of years. One day is 24 hours.
People started to combine distance and time to describe motion. Feet and hours were both common, so foot per hour became a possible speed unit. Over time, faster and more useful speed units, like mile per hour and meter per second, became more popular. Foot per hour stayed as a very small and rarely used unit.
Symbol & Abbreviation
The standard way to write foot per hour is:
- ft/h is the most common symbol
- ft hr-1 is sometimes used in science writing
Important points:
- ft stands for foot
- /h or per hour means “for each hour”
Current Use Around the World
Foot per hour is not a standard speed unit in most places. Today, people more often use:
- meter per second (m/s) in science and most countries
- kilometer per hour (km/h) for road speeds in most of the world
- mile per hour (mph) for road speeds mainly in the United States and a few other places
Foot per hour may still appear in:
- Very slow movement studies, like the growth of roots or crystals
- Certain engineering or lab settings that work with very small speeds
- Educational examples, to help students learn how units work
In normal daily life, you will almost never see speeds written in ft/h, because it is too tiny to be handy.
Example Conversions
Here are useful facts for converting 1 foot per hour into other speed units:
- 1 ft/h ≈ 0.0000847 m/s (meter per second)
- 1 ft/h = 0.0003048 km/h (kilometer per hour)
- 1 ft/h ≈ 0.000189 mph (mile per hour)
From foot per hour to meter per second
Steps:
- 1 foot = 0.3048 meter
- 1 hour = 3600 seconds
So:
1 ft/h = 0.3048 meters ÷ 3600 seconds ≈ 0.0000847 m/s.
Some examples:
- 10 ft/h ≈ 0.000847 m/s
- 100 ft/h ≈ 0.00847 m/s
- 1000 ft/h ≈ 0.0847 m/s
From foot per hour to kilometer per hour
1 foot = 0.0003048 kilometer, so:
1 ft/h = 0.0003048 km/h.
Examples:
- 1000 ft/h = 1000 × 0.0003048 ≈ 0.3048 km/h
- 5000 ft/h ≈ 1.524 km/h
From foot per hour to mile per hour
There are 5280 feet in one mile.
So:
1 ft/h = 1 ÷ 5280 mph ≈ 0.000189 mph.
Examples:
- 1000 ft/h ≈ 0.189 mph
- 5000 ft/h ≈ 0.947 mph
From meter per second to foot per hour
To go the other way:
- 1 meter = 3.28084 feet
- 1 second = 1 ÷ 3600 hour
So:
1 m/s ≈ 3.28084 × 3600 ft/h ≈ 11811 ft/h.
Examples:
- 0.5 m/s ≈ 5905 ft/h
- 2 m/s ≈ 23622 ft/h
Related Units
Foot per hour is part of a family of speed units that mix feet with different time units:
- Foot per second (ft/s) object moves feet in each second, much faster unit than ft/h
- Foot per minute (ft/min) object moves feet in each minute, still slow but more useful than ft/h
Other common speed units include:
- Mile per hour (mph) used for car speeds in the United States and a few other countries
- Kilometer per hour (km/h) used for car speeds in most of the world
- Meter per second (m/s) main speed unit in science and engineering
- Knot (kn) used for ships and planes, 1 knot is 1 nautical mile per hour
FAQs
What does foot per hour measure?
Foot per hour measures speed, how fast something moves. It shows how many feet of distance are covered in one hour of time.
Why is foot per hour so small?
Because one hour is long and one foot is short, the speed comes out very tiny. For most real life motions, like walking or driving, ft/h numbers would be huge and hard to use.
Where is foot per hour actually used?
It may appear in textbooks, slow growth measurements, or special engineering work where motion is very slow. In normal life, people almost never use ft/h.
Is foot per hour an SI unit?
No. The SI system uses meters, not feet. The SI unit for speed is meter per second (m/s). Foot per hour belongs to the old imperial and US customary systems.
What is the difference between ft/h and ft/s?
Both use feet for distance, but the time parts are different. Foot per hour uses hours. Foot per second uses seconds. 1 ft/s is much faster than 1 ft/h.
How can I quickly tell if a speed in ft/h is fast or slow?
You can convert it to mph or km/h. If 1000 ft/h is only about 0.19 mph, then even 5000 ft/h is still slower than normal walking speed.
How do I write foot per hour correctly?
The clearest way is to write it as ft/h. You can also write it out in words as foot per hour.