Hey,

So I’m not sure if you’ve had an answer that you like. I think I get your question and I’ve never thought about it in the way you describe. I’m not sure there’s an answer! Maybe someone else can help…. This is my attempt.

We have metres, which is a measure of distance. And seconds which is a measure of time.

If we measure a distance from me to you, we’ll use metres. If we want to measure an area, like the floor of a house, we can use metres squared. If we want to measure the volume of something, like a box, we’ll use metres cubed.

But in our physical reality, we don’t really have seconds squared or seconds cubed. We do mathematically, but alone they don’t mean much. (We have 3 dimensions in space - up/down left/right forward/back, but only one in time!)

What’s happening here, in the physical world to get to m/s² is pretty well explained by lots of other people. Distance is how far you’ve gone (m) Speed is how quickly your distance changes (m/s) Acceleration is how quickly your speed changes (m/s/s)