Re: air resistance

[John Mallinckrodt <ajmallinckro@CSUPomona.Edu>]

On Sat, 29 Nov 1997, John Mallinckrodt wrote:

> ... I found a best fit with a drag per unit mass (in SI 
> units) of 0.283*v^(2.500). ...

I guess some form of Murphy's law is demonstrated by the fact that as soon
as I sent this I did a little more analysis and discovered that what I had
thought was a "best fit" was merely one of many very good fits.  As it
turns out, I can get a very good fit to Ludwik's d vs. t data (rms error
of around .001 m or less) with drag exponents anywhere from .5 to 3.  And
despite the fact that I misspoke wrt the "best fit" parameters, I think
this only strengthens my conclusion that the data is not sufficient to
determine the drag exponent. 

John
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 A. John Mallinckrodt      http://www.intranet.csupomona.edu/~ajm
 Professor of Physics    mailto:ajmallinckro@csupomona.edu
 Physics Department       voice:909-869-4054
 Cal Poly Pomona            fax:909-869-5090
 Pomona, CA 91768-4031   office:Building 8, Room 223