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Sunday, October 18, 2009

How To Deal With Air Friction Mathematically - Hockey Puck

Air friction is a different creature compared to static or kinetic friction. Static and kinetic frictions are forces between two solid surfaces, whereas air friction is between a solid surface and a fluid. Something like water friction behaves similar to air friction, where these friction forces depend on how fast you try to move through the fluid (think about how it is actually tougher to try and run in water than to walk in water). Check out how to handle this fluid friction mathematically...it is certainly more involved than dealing with static or kinetic friction, which we treat as constant forces. Air friction is non-constant, and calculus must be used to find an exponential behavior with time.


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