Considering Drag as a Resistance Force in Classical Mechanics

by Alexander Rodriguez

Submitted : Fall 2019

The purpose of this paper is to find, explain, and demonstrate how the concept of free-fall can be extremely misleading. To demonstrate this, two cases of a ping-pong ball will be considered, examined, and compared. In both cases both objects will be dropped from rest, however the second case will include the effects of a quadratic drag force. A ping-pong ball is going to be used in each case because it has a small mass and a high drag coefficient. This allows the resistance force to have the greatest impact thus giving a better result to compare.

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