How Can Mass and Air Resistance Influence Real-Life Physics Applications?

[physicsdude]

Hello everyone I have been searching google and other search engines constantly to try to find an answer to my question. Try as I might I could not find anything

I found this forum and figured maybe you guys could help me out

Ok so without further ado here is the question...

"What are some real-life applications for your science project?"

And for my science project I basically dropped some tennis balls from the top of a building, then filled the tennis ball with 30 pennies and dropped it, etc...

Thanks in advance for any help I receive

 

[Doc Al]

Originally posted by physicsdude
And for my science project I basically dropped some tennis balls from the top of a building, then filled the tennis ball with 30 pennies and dropped it, etc...

What were you trying to show? What did you measure?

 

[physicsdude]

I was just trying to prove if mass had an effect on how fast an object fell

I measured how fast it took the ball to hit the ground

 

[Esperanto]

How high do you have to drop a tennis ball to have an acceptable chance of knocking someone out? Or, how many pennies in a tennis ball dropped at a certain height to have a good % of knocking someone out. Then again, it doesn't have to be a tennis ball. I'm rather fond of freefalling pumpkins, You?

 

[physicsdude]

Yes I lover falling pumpkins

Thanks for the suggestion man but would that be considered a real life application?

 

[Doc Al]

Originally posted by physicsdude
I was just trying to prove if mass had an effect on how fast an object fell

I measured how fast it took the ball to hit the ground

What did you find out?

 

[Esperanto]

Dropping objects on people is very much a practical application!

My father taught me something very important when I was but a little kid: When dealing with bloodsucking educators you can't always be creative.

Sometimes it's best to be done with it and just take what you got and shove it at their faces because, quite frankly, they could not care less about what you think. Mmm, I'm probably saying this crap today because I'm bitter as hell that I have to write a goddamn long goddamn essay in history. And I'm too tired to do anything but hallucinate a clown behind me with a big fat sickle.

 

[chroot]

Well, the study of gravity has tremendous real-life applications. How about satellites? Space travel?

- Warren

 

[physicsdude]

Yes I know gravity in general has a lot of applications but I am talking about this very use of gravity that involves mass and air resistance and whatnot for an application.

Originally posted by Doc Al . What did you find out?

I don't see this having anything to do with finding real life applications but I found that, generally, the more mass, the faster something falls.

 

[chroot]

Originally posted by physicsdude
I don't see this having anything to do with finding real life applications but I found that, generally, the more mass, the faster something falls.

Eek. Systematic error?

- Warren

 

[Doc Al]

Originally posted by physicsdude
Yes I know gravity in general has a lot of applications but I am talking about this very use of gravity that involves mass and air resistance and whatnot for an application.




I don't see this having anything to do with finding real life applications but I found that, generally, the more mass, the faster something falls.

I asked the question to find out what you were investigating. This is your first mention in this thread of air resistance, which helps explain what you saw. (I assume you weren't looking for real life applications of penny-filled tennis balls!) For real life applications of air resistance, what about parachute design and skydiving? Streamline design of cars, motorcycles, even ski helmets? High speed travel (rockets, space shuttle re-entry) through the atmosphere?

Too bad you didn't take the next step in your study (or did you?) by dropping balls of same mass, but different size.