Lab 4

This lab investigates Newton's Law of motion which states that force equals mass times acceleration ( where as it applies to a parachutist.

Since the parachutist is falling through air two forces come into play, gravity and drag created by air resistance. These combine as follows: . is by Newton's Law what would happen if something is falling in a vacumn and the drag in this case is proportional to the velocity. It should be noted that a qualified parachutist can vary the drag coefficient during freefall noticeably. Combining these facts we have an ODE for velocity :

In this case the parachutist has a mass of freefalls for before opening the chute for another . The drag coefficient for the chute is We will investigate what happens to the parachutist during the that he falls using various freefall drag coefficients.

In each case use the freefall coef. for the first and then on the same grid set and the initial conditions at and the amount as read from the graph. Print the resulting graph in each case.

Freefall coefficients:

1.

2.

3.

4.

Now write a summary of your observations and a recommendation to the parachutist as to what should be happening when he deploys the chute (one page max).