profaith
- 2
- 0
hey how do you find terminal velocity? let say if you need to find the terminal veolcity of a ping pong ball? anyone has any ideas? what kind of experiment can i conduct?
The terminal velocity of spheres like ping pong balls are fairly easy to compute and measure. The motion of such a sphere in still air at standard atmospheric temp & pressure will have a Drag Coefficient approx constant at C_{drag} = (0.44). The force F_{drag} due to aerodynamic drag ("air resistance") when the sphere falls thru air under those conditions is given by:profaith said:hey how do you find terminal velocity? let say if you need to find the terminal veolcity of a ping pong ball? anyone has any ideas? what kind of experiment can i conduct?
xanthym said:The above value can be checked experimentally by dropping the sphere from a tall ladder in still air. Time the fall and divide the distance fallen (e.g., height of the ladder) by the time interval to determine approx terminal velocity.