I know it has to do something with mass, but i’m clueless.
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Since an ant is so small, its terminal vosity is much lower than what is required to kill an ant, and with size, mass grows exponentially, and the higher the mass allows more force to be required to slow the decent
Terminal velocity as a function of drag, surface area, and mass. I.agine the difference between a feather falling and a bowling ball. The feather has a much lower terminal velocity (or max speed while free falling) because it has lower mass and higher drag.
Remember that when you’re talking about gravity on Earth, the mass of the object doesn’t matter. A bowling ball falls at the same rate as a marble. What this means is that while you might be tempted to think an ant falling off your desk is the equivalent of a human falling off the Empire State Building, it’s not…it’s the equivalent of a human falling off a desk.
Terminal velocity. Ants are so small that when they hit the ground, the sudden stop isn’t enough to cause any real damage. This is pretty much exclusive to really small things. A mouse dropped and allowed to reach terminal velocity would absolutely unalive. Humans are huge in comparison, our terminal velocity means the sudden stop we experience kills us
When something falls through the air it is being pulled by gravity alone. The air itself also provides some upward force as it needs to move out of the way. The faster something falls the harder it is for air to get out of the way and the harder that air will push back. Eventually they will equal out. We call this “terminal velocity”
In order for the air to push back on us as much as we would falling through it we need to go 120mph. An ant equals out to about 4mph. Once an ant reaches that speed of 4mph gravity can’t pull it though air any faster. If we were to fall at 4mph we would be fine too because 4mph is a fast walking pace for an average human.
Why the difference? Well it’s because of the square cubed law. That is if you take any three dimensional object and double its surface area, you will in turn quadruple its volume. In a practical sense this kind of means making an animal 2x as big means you also make it 4x as heavy. Meaning it will take more speed when falling to eventually equal out and reach terminal velocity.
So if an ant were the size of a human it would likely fall at close to 120mph and if a human were the size of an ant we’d fall at close to 4mph.
As you fall, air rushes past you, creating friction, which slows you down. This balancing of gravity and air resistance creates a maximum speed in which you can free fall called terminal velocity. It is dependent on your mass and shape.
The terminal velocity of a human is around 120 miles per hour.
The terminal velocity of an ant is around 4 miles per hour. That is, about the pace of a brisk walking speed.
terminal velocity.
Mass spread across area dictates the maximum speed at which an object NOT IN VACUUM can fall due to air resistance pushing back against the falling object.
Humans are squishy endoskeletal beings. A fall from 3 meters results in an impact speed of ~17mph(27kph)….thats easily enough to fracture a human spine. 15 meters gets you up to ~38mph(61kph). Terminal velocity for the average person is around 120mph (193kph) SERIOUS SPLAT ACTION!
And weigh next to nothing, theyre terminal velocity is 4mph (6.4kph). Their exoskeleton is more than strong enough to manage that.
Structure and weight. A human is very heavy, an ant is very light. That combine with how we are made, humans are meat sacks with organs wrapped around bones that are long and made to impact in certain directions only, ants have exoskeleton that encase their bodies in almost sn armor.
So you drop an ant and an Aunt from 3rd story balcony. The ant will never reach full peak velocity because it’s too light and will slow down from air resistance. The Aunt would just plummet.
Now the ant is not only falling slower, but also as weighs less is landing with less force.
Like imagine a baloon and a brick falling on your head, the balloon would be nothing while the brick would hurt. Well that same thing happen when you land, whatever part you land on gets the rest of the force from whatever weight is behind it. So ant dont have enough weight to injure their exoskeletons, but humans and their heavy twig shaped bones and water filled meat bags do.
Terminal velocity is the top speed that something can achieve while falling through something (air, in this case). It’s mainly based on two things: the force of drag, or the force restraining the falling object (in this case, air resistance) and the force of gravity, or the downward force pulling the object downward (in this case, directly related to the weight of the object). When these two forces balance each other out, whatever is falling reaches terminal velocity, meaning that they won’t pick up any more speed, so they will continue to fall at the same rate.
In the case of an ant vs a human falling, in both cases we can think of the force of drag, or the air resistance, being same- both the human and the ant are falling through air. However, the ant weighs much less than a human does, so the force of gravity on the ant, or the downward pull as it falls, will be much less. So as an ant falls, it is likely that it will be light enough to reach terminal velocity, which will be slower than a humans terminal velocity would be because the weight value to balance out is so much less. However, the human is going to continue picking up speed and would have to fall much further and be falling much faster to reach terminal velocity.
The Square-cube law
Some physical properties are related to area, and some to volume. As you increase in size, area increases with the square of your size and volume increases with the cube. The cube increases much faster
If you double in size, area increases by 2×2=4 times, volume by 2×2×2=8 times
If ten times the size, area increases 10×10=100 times, volume 10×10×10=1000 times
A human is about 1000 times bigger than an ant, so has about 1,000,000 times the area, and 1,000,000,000 the volume
What physical properties are relevant to surviving a fall? Well, force due to gravity, which depends on mass, which increases with volume. But there’s also air resistance to slow you down, which increases with area. The effect of air resistance relative to gravity will be about 1000 times smaller for the human than the ant, so you’ll fall faster
And then when you hit the ground, the stress on your body again comes from mass, but the structural strength of your bones and flesh depends more on the cross sectional area. So the human’s body is about 1000 times weaker relative to its weight than the ant’s
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