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On average, how long does it take a drop of rain to get from a cloud to the Earth?
Question Date: 2005-04-13
Answer 1:

Your question sounds like a good physics problem.

How high above the ground is your rain drop? It will start falling at zero meters per second. It will accelerate at 9.8 meters per second every second. That means it'll be falling at 9.8 meters per second at the end of the first second and twice as fast at the end of the 2nd second and 3 times as fast at the end of the 3rd second.

You get the idea. Maybe it will end up falling at terminal velocity.

I was curious, so I looked for terminal velocity on the web and found this from NASA: terminal velocity
and this:Speed of a Skydiver

Terminal velocity depends strongly on the weight of the falling object. Water drops typically have a volume of about 50 micro liters, which means they weigh about 50 mg = 0.05 gram. That's the mass [m] in the equation, f = ma on the NASA website.



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