Try it! In this calculation, I have a ping pong ball and a ball without air resistance dropped from the same height. Actually, this is a Glowscript program so you can run it yourself and even edit it. Here is a model of a ping pong ball falling from a height of 10 meters. Also, don't forget that my ebook ( Just Enough Physics) has a whole chapter on numerical calculations. Here is an older post that gives an introduction to numerical calculations. During this short time interval, the forces are roughly constant. In short, I can use a computer to model just a tiny time interval for a falling object. We can still solve this with a numerical calculations. This means that the force (and thus the acceleration) is not constant. Air resistance is a force that depends on the velocity. But what if I add in air resistance? What then? There is a problem. Solving for the time is fairly straightforward. ![]() First, I could just ignore air resistance and use the typical kinematic equation: If I drop an object from some height, there are two things I could do to obtain a value for the falling time. If you go super fast, this model probably isn't valid. I only need the mass and the terminal velocity and I can build a model for air resistance.
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