Why do things which travel faster experience more drag?

Answer 1

stewart H is the only one who comes close to answering the question thus far... the others kinda beat around the bush without getting to it.

As Stewart said, when you're travelling faster, you hit more air molecules. in fact, lets metaphor this: you're running the gauntlet and the air molecules will be represented by hands that you have to pass. If you run twice as fast, you get hit by twice as many hands per second (assuming constant spacing of hands). Thanks Stewart H, for pointing this out.

the second part, the part that stewart did not account for, has nothing to do with the surface area of the object, as some answerers would have you believe. the square relationship between velocity and drag assumes constant surface area anyway. So what is is? well, lets go back to our metaphor. You're in that gauntlet and you double your speed. you're hitting twice as many hands, yes, but you're also hitting each hand twice as hard. this means that the force imparted per particle struck is double, and you're striking double the number of particles.... tada, we've arrived at the exact reasoning behind why an increase in velocity corresponds to a squared increase in drag forces.

Answer 2

i would guess that faster things experience just as much drag as slower things. its just that the drag happens in much less time. lemme see if i can make a mental picture:

if you have a box that you will be moving 10 units, it will have all the drag associated with moving it 10 units. that could be air displacement, friction on the ground, whatever.

now lets say that that drag that we are talking about is 1 drag unit per distance unit...

if you move that box through all ten distance units in one minute, you will have all 10 drag units in that one minute. if you move the box through all 10 distance units in 5 seconds, you will have the same amount of drag, but instead of being spread out over a whole minute, all that drag occurred in just 5 seconds.

now, that would seem like 12 times the drag, but its really just the same amount of drag, just compressed into a shorter time.

hope that helps.

Answer 3

This is a little simplistic, but think of it this way..................

Any object moving through the air has to push air out of the way.
The faster the object moves, the more air it has to push out of the way in a given time. Pushing the air out of the way involves imparting energy to the air. It is this loss of energy to the air that we call drag, so, the faster the object goes the greater the drag.

Answer 4

Aerodynamic or hydrodynamic drag are dynamic forces, that is, they are dependent on the relative speed of teh object and the media, as well as the viscosity of the medium and the shape of the object. As the speed increases, so does the drag (increasing at greater than a linear rate; I believe it's a square function but don't quote me on that).

Answer 5

Because the drag due to air resistance is non-linear.

Look up the drag coefficient in a physics texts, it is a function of the square of velocity and is linear with respect to area and the air's density.

If you fall out of an airplane, eventually to attain a balance between the force downward due to gravity (F = mg) and the upward force of air resistance, at that point your speed remains constant.

Answer 6

THIS IS VERY SIMPLE, WHY DID YOU ASK?

NEWTON'S THIRD LAW OF MOTION:-
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The faster you go the more will be the force on you by the medium in the opposite direction.

Answer 7

due to friction of the atom in front getting bigger hammering