Terminal Velocity
Purpose
Demonstrates terminal velocity and how it scales with mass for objects of identical shape. A stack of four coffee filters reaches twice the terminal velocity of a single filter, so when dropped from twice the height it hits the ground at the same time — showing that \(v_t \propto \sqrt{m}\) for quadratic drag.
Figure 1:
Equipment for the terminal velocity demonstration: coffee filters, bar clamp to secure the two-meter stick, and two-meter stick (partially visible at left).