Caption: The animation shows a ball starting from rest accelerating downward under the force of gravity.

Features:

1. The magnitude of the acceleration due to gravity near the Earth's surface is by Newtonian physics exactly equal in value to the Earth's gravitational field strength g = 9.8 N/kg = 9.8 m/s**2 (fiducial value) (AKA little g).

2. The value of g actually varies with location on Earth's surface over a range of ∼ 0.7 % (see Wikipedia: Gal for g range 9.76--9.83 m/s**2). This variation is quite easily measured, but is below human sense perception.

3. Often g is called little g in contrast to gravitational constant G=6.67408(31)*10**(-11) (MKS units) which is often called big G.

4. The velocity due to acceleration due to gravity near the Earth's surface starting from rest is given by

        v=g*t  , where t is time.
   
        For example for g=9.8 m/s**2, we have 
   
              ___________________________
   
                 t (s)       v  (m/s)
              ___________________________
   
                  0            0
                  1          9.8
                  2         19.6
                  3         29.4
                  4         39.2
              __________________________
              

   The above results neglect air drag and other complicating effects.

5. The acceleration due to gravity in GENERAL is exactly equal in value to the gravitational field.

   The gravitational field in general is symbolized by g: the boldface means the gravitational field is a vector field.

   The magnitude of g is g which is NOT to be confused with little g which is actually a special case of the magnitude of g.