Math 312 - Applied Math handout # 1

Vertical projectile motion with resistance proportional to speed

Consider Newton’s Second Law for vertical motion (with y measured upwards):
dv k
dt mv g, v 0 v0 (1)

Equation (1) can be solved using the integrating factor exp kt/m or by the method of undetermined
coefficients (try both if you’ve taken an ODE class!); the latter is a little quicker, so I write
kt/m gm
v ce
k
and using the initial condition, we find that c gm/k v 0 and so the speed of the ball is given by
gm kt/m gm
vt v0 e (2)
k k
Notice from this equation that the terminal speed v is defined by
gm
v lim v t
t k
which, for a feather, snowflake or whiffle ball, is pretty much achieved before it hits the ground.

Suppose however that we are really only interested in the altitude y as a function of time; OK – if the
ball is projected upward from y 0 then y 0 0. Hence from (2)
t gm ks/m gm
yt v0 e ds (3)
0 k k
where s is a dummy variable for t. Upon integrating we obtain

yt m v 0 gm e ks/m gms | s t (4)

k k k s 0

m v0 gm gm
1 e kt/m t, 0 t T
k k k
where T is the time at which the ball hits the ground. Now for an interesting question: does the ball
take longer to rise to its maximum height, or to fall back from that height? All I’m going to do here
is to graph y t for various values of k/m and v 0 , and then draw some conclusions.

Choosing k/m 6 s 1 and v 0 5, 10, 15, 20 m/s, with g 9. 8 m/s 2 we find for v 0 5 m/s
6t
yt 1. 1056 1 e 1. 6333t
the graph of which is the lowest of the four shown; the others get higher with increasing values of v 0
as would be expected.
Note that the graph below is not the path of the projectile.
 3

2.5

1.5

0.5

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2t 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 2.2 2.4

Now what do you think?