Why does air resistance increase with speed

For now, it's all I have to work with. If I drop an object from some height, there are two things I could do to obtain a value for the falling time. First, I could just ignore air resistance and use the typical kinematic equation:. Solving for the time is fairly straightforward.

But what if I add in air resistance? What then? There is a problem. Air resistance is a force that depends on the velocity. This means that the force and thus the acceleration is not constant. That's a big problem.

We can still solve this with a numerical calculations. In short, I can use a computer to model just a tiny time interval for a falling object. During this short time interval, the forces are roughly constant. Here is an older post that gives an introduction to numerical calculations.

Also, don't forget that my ebook Just Enough Physics has a whole chapter on numerical calculations. Let's just get to the calculation. Here is a model of a ping pong ball falling from a height of 10 meters.

Actually, this is a Glowscript program so you can run it yourself and even edit it. Try it! In this calculation, I have a ping pong ball and a ball without air resistance dropped from the same height. In this plot, you can see that the ping pong ball hits after the no-air resistance ball with a time difference of 0. But this doesn't answer the question: how high is too high? Of course, there isn't just one answer to this question. The maximum height depends on how accurate you want your model.

Here is the real plot that you want. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Does air resistance increase the speed of a falling object? Ask Question. Asked 4 years, 11 months ago. Active 2 years, 11 months ago. Viewed 2k times. Improve this question. Crusaderpyro Crusaderpyro 6 6 bronze badges.

Drag is always opposite to the direction of motion so it can only slow free falling things down. But indeed, the video does not explicitly say this was slow motion.

Would be better if they did. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Apoorv Potnis Apoorv Potnis 1 1 gold badge 8 8 silver badges 33 33 bronze badges. The drag equation tells us that drag D is equal to a drag coefficient Cd times one half the air density r times the velocity V squared times a reference area A on which the drag coefficient is based.

The drag force depends on the square of the velocity. So as the body accelerates its velocity and the drag will increase. It will reach a point where the drag is exactly equal to the weight. When drag is equal to weight, there is no net external force on the object, and the acceleration will become equal to zero.