So the AP PHYSICS exams are on Monday, and I for one am have already geared into panic mode. I can’t figure out if I should study some more, rest, give up, or cry off my hysteria and try to relax (My heart begins to palpitate just thinking about taking the test…actually, I think it might be good to panic beforehand, helps avoid all the shaking during the test). Anyways, lets get back to a more erudite subject matter and discuss a physics revelation that I had this week or more accurately last Friday night.
In the subconscious state of sleep, I have often been witness to experiences that defy even the most basic principles of physics but rarely any that actually stay true to life. However, in this particular dream, I fell off the top of a bookshelf and after the initial scare began to gently float downward at a constant velocity (the bookshelf might have had to do with repeated childhood attempts to climb it), a phenomenon easily explained by the drag force created by air resistance.
Fdrag = 0.5CpAv^2
Vterminal = square root of 2mg/CpA
Since the air surrounding me in the dream was rather syrupy and coagulated, the air density (p) must have been pretty high and so was my cross sectional area because I was falling flat on my front. This all explains why my terminal speed was reached so quickly and why it was low enough that I didn’t actually wake in a panic.
