Answer 1:
That is a very good question! You've already
figured out the two things that most affect air
resistance or what engineers call "drag".
The force of the air pushing past an object in motion is proportional to the object's frontal area times the square of its velocity.
To understand what frontal area is, imagine cutting a baseball in half. The flat surface that you made when you cut the ball is its frontal area or the area "seen" by the air. So you can see that velocity is the most important variable.
Let's say I throw a ball through the air. Next, let's throw a ball that is 2 times as big. We have just increased the drag by 2 times (if the drag force was 1,it is now 2). Now, let's just throw the smaller ball 2 times as fast. We have just increased the drag by 4 times (if the drag force was 1, it is now 4). |