Free Fall

Free Fall

1. State of a body that moves freely in any manner in the presence of gravity.

   • Freefall is a special case of motion with constant acceleration, because acceleration due to gravity is always constant and downward. This is true even when an object is thrown upward or has zero velocity.

2. Without the effects of air resistance, the speed of an object free falling toward Earth would increase by about 32 ft (9.8 m) per second every second. Luckily for skydivers everywhere, they do experience resistance from the air as they fall, and because of that resistance, skydivers and any other object falling within Earth’s atmosphere will reach a terminal velocity.

   • Terminal velocity is the fastest speed that an object will reach as it falls through the air.

3. 9.8 m/s/s (often approximated as 10 m/s/s for back-of-the-envelope calculations)

4. The distance the object falls, or height, h, is 1/2 gravity x the square of the time falling. Velocity is defined as gravity x time.