Totally respect you for saying you don’t get it. Way better to admit what you don’t know.
In a vacuum, you would be correct that things falling to earth would just keep accelerating until they hit the ground. But we have air which slows things down. Everything that falls in earths atmosphere reaches it’s terminal velocity if it falls from a high enough height.
One way to think of it is to think about how anything falling in air has to push the air below it out of the way to fall. If I just jump out of a plane, I’m going to accelerate to a velocity that will likely kill me. Now if I bring a parachute, I’m bringing more weight, but I’m also able to push against a lot more air and the amount of air I push against will slow me enough that even though I’m still falling, my terminal velocity is low enough that I can survive.
The more air something can push against in comparison to it’s mass, the lower it’s terminal velocity. That being said everything falling in our atmosphere will reach a point where gravity can’t pull it through the air resistance any faster. The force of gravity and air resistance are balanced. That is it’s terminal velocity.
Totally respect you for saying you don’t get it. Way better to admit what you don’t know.
In a vacuum, you would be correct that things falling to earth would just keep accelerating until they hit the ground. But we have air which slows things down. Everything that falls in earths atmosphere reaches it’s terminal velocity if it falls from a high enough height.
One way to think of it is to think about how anything falling in air has to push the air below it out of the way to fall. If I just jump out of a plane, I’m going to accelerate to a velocity that will likely kill me. Now if I bring a parachute, I’m bringing more weight, but I’m also able to push against a lot more air and the amount of air I push against will slow me enough that even though I’m still falling, my terminal velocity is low enough that I can survive.
The more air something can push against in comparison to it’s mass, the lower it’s terminal velocity. That being said everything falling in our atmosphere will reach a point where gravity can’t pull it through the air resistance any faster. The force of gravity and air resistance are balanced. That is it’s terminal velocity.