terminal velocity

What is terminal velocity

Where velocity remains constant no longer accelerates or decelerates

What happened to an object when it’s falling from a tall height? Refer to terminal velocity.

When an object first starts falling, its weight downward is much larger than any air resistance upwards and so there’s a resultant force in the downwards direction.

This causes it to accelerate towards the ground as the object accelerates velocity increases. The resistance will also increase until at some point the resistance will equal the weight meaning the resultant force will fall to 0. As there is no result in force acting on an object anymore there can’t be an acceleration so we say that the object has reached terminal velocity as it will stay at constant velocity until there is a change

What happens when parachute is opened

The air resistance suddenly increases causing them to slow down

Because they are slowing down the air resistance will decrease again until it balances their weight . The skydiver has now reached a new lower terminal velocity

Nanak