When Does Air Resistance Become Significant in Free Fall?

Abstract

In introductory physics laboratories, students who experiment with freely falling objects frequently attribute any error in their experimental results to the presence of air resistance. It is, therefore, important to realize when and at what point during a free fall air resistance begins to play a significant role in the motion of the falling object. In this paper we address this question, and we show that blaming air resistance for errors in free-fall experiments in introductory physics laboratories is almost never justified.