Falling Body with Zero, Linear, or Quadratic Air Resistance

drop height

y

0

(m)

5.

linear terminal velocity

v

b

(m/s)

5.

quadratic terminal velocity

v

c

(m/s)

5.

time (s)

1.

This Demonstration shows plots of the one-dimensional downward trajectory of a falling body as a function of time. The cases considered are: no air resistance (blue), linear resistance (red), and quadratic resistance (purple). The drop height

y

(vertical axis) is in meters and the horizontal axis is time

t

in seconds. The acceleration due to gravity

g

is set to

9.8m/

2

s

. You can vary the drop height

y

0

, the terminal velocity for linear air resistance

v

b

, the terminal velocity for quadratic air resistance

v

c

, and the time

t

, in order to see where the object is at a certain time.