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In grade school i learned it was about 32 ft/s2, but by high school on it was all 9.8[1/06] m/s2. Then in engineering school it was sometimes 10. None of that had anything to do with local gravity and everything to do with Americans having to be special at first, followed by the fact that our science classes are actually in metric (statics and dynamics were in both as some fields of engineering haven’t metricated yet here). And the 10 is because you can round to a round number by barely even touching your fudge factor so why not.
Interesting - what part of the US are you from?
I was going to say that even here in the US it was 9.81 m/s^2. I don’t remember ever being taught the number in feet (in NYS) nor seeing it for my kids (in MA). Science was always metric
Ohio, and Catholic schools. It was clearly on its way out. In retrospect it was definitely a strange situation where different teachers had different opinions on metric. Some clearly thought it’s fine for science, and others clearly just wanted to quit our two measurement system that does nothing but prolongs the inevitable.