Why isn’t a penny dropped from space able to kill you?
In: Physics
Air resistance. Think about a piece of paper. If I drop it from shoulder height, it doesn’t go very fast, right? If I drop it from the top of my house, it might go a little faster, but there’s a limit to how fast that piece of paper can fall. The air is getting in the way, preventing my paper from falling any faster!
This speed is called the *terminal velocity.* The faster an object goes, the more air resistance it encounters. You can think of this like a rubber band: the more you stretch it, the harder it becomes to stretch. At some point, an object reaches a speed where the air resistance directly counteracts the gravity. That’s like when you can’t stretch the rubber band anymore because it’s gotten too difficult.
A penny’s terminal velocity isn’t powerful enough to kill you.
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