In article <3D99E375.D3F91328@gmx.de>,
 Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote:

> In the general case the force generated by air resistance is a quite
> complicated function of the speed.  At low speeds it can be approximated
> by a force proportional to the speed (the first of the cited formulas).

Air pressure, turbulence, surface material, object geometry, air and 
surface temperature...

A water drop will get a different amount of resistance than an 
equivalently sized hailstone, they have very different surfaces, one 
hard and rigid, the other smooth but deformable, rippling and flowing. A 
square piece of cloth stretched over a frame can fly high into the air, 
the same cloth without the frame will flutter and experience large 
amounts of drag. A golfball will have a very different trajectory than a 
perfectly smooth ball of identical size and weight. I don't want to 
think about a vaporizing meteor.

You just need to figure out how complex your simulation needs to be, how 
good of an approximation you want...a linear function might do the job 
just fine.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

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