this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2025
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Hold up. Didn’t some guy drop balls off a roof to show that things fall at the same speed?
So, yes and no. Acceleration due to gravity impacts all objects equally. With no air resistance, on earth, everything speeds up at 9.8m/s/s. But, that "no air resistance" is a big asterisk. This is why, say, parachutes work. It's also how we get terminal velocity. Often misinterpreted as "how fast you'd have to go to die from a fall" it's actually "how fast you need to go before the drag from your air resistance is a force greater than or equal to gravity"
Right. That all makes sense. So the air resistance is what is also causing it to heat up. I still don’t see why a person wouldn’t do that.
So, multiple options here. Skydivers regularly hit terminal velocity, as fast as they'll go in atmosphere, before pulling their chutes. At these speeds, heat from friction isn't enough to worry about. Once again though, if you're coming down from space, that "in atmosphere" asterisk goes away. If you're dropping from a satellite, you're going at speeds necessary to orbit, and you don't have anything slowing you down until you hit the atmosphere. Suddenly your terminal velocity is way lower than infinity, and the friction you're feeling from the atmosphere is INTENSE, rapidly turning that speed into heat
Alight cool. All basically what I figured. Thanks!
I recently had this explained to me, terminal velocity is falling versus the force of the air pushing back on you, right? In vacuum you just keep accelerating, in atmosphere the air pushes back against you falling, limiting your speed
That force follows the rule that force (of air pushing back) is equal to acceleration (9.8m/s/s) times mass
So different weights fall at different speeds.
Half of the replies to me when I said what you said were
Or similar
Shape affects aerodynamics.
Well sure but I don’t think a human is shaped in a way that would really affect this.
Never seen a sky diver? Head down vs belly flop changes their speed
Still won’t stop you from eventually reaching the same speed tho.
...yes it will.
Terminal velocity occurs when the forces pulling ng you and pushing back at you are in balance. The drag force is a lot higher when you're a larger profile. The balancing will occur sooner