02
Dec
We’ve been talking about terminal velocity in class lately (due to the forces of gravity and friction from the air), and I was curious just how fast terminal velocity was. As it turns out, there is no defined terminal velocity. You can change it depending on everything such as drag, mass, and size(surface area) of the object that’s falling. The more surface area there is, the lower the terminal velocity is. In this video, there are terminal velocities ranging anywhere from 121 miles per hour, which is the average human terminal velocity, and 240 miles per hour or higher for something like the hawk in the video. So again, there is no defined terminal velocity. But it’s still cool, and actually kind of amazing.
December 4th, 2011 at 10:48 am
I think its amazing that terminal velocity allows us to do things like skydiving. Without it we would just accelerate until we hit the ground and on impact we would be going to fast. I wonder what the fastest terminal velocity is? I think its crazy that a hawk can go up to 240 mph. It must not create much air resisitance.
December 4th, 2011 at 4:18 pm
I also found this video to be very interesting and at the smae time, very informational. I never really understood what terminal velocity was, even in class when we were talking about it. This video actually showed what it really was and it helped me really inderstand what terminal velocity is. I also think it is crazy that everything has a different terminal velocity (expecially because it is such a drastic change.)
December 5th, 2011 at 4:44 pm
This video was really interesting! I never knew that terminal velocity is dependent on the object that is falling, i thought that everything would reach the same terminal velocity since acceleration due to gravity is the same on all objects. I also found it interesting the dramatic differences between the terminal velocites. I wonder what the smallest terminal velocity is, and what the largest is? I found it shocking that hawks have such a higher terminal velocity compared to humans.
December 5th, 2011 at 9:12 pm
I never thought it was possible for a human to go faster than around 120 mph let alone 300 mph! I found it interesting that the hawk actually spotted the lure and went after it. I never knew hawks could dive that fast for any reason. According to Wikipedia/Guiness Book of World Records, the fastest human free fall is held by Joseph Kittinger, in 1960, at 102,800 feet. He fell for 4 and a half minutes and reached a maximum speed of 614 mph.