Terminal Velocity Calculator

This calculator finds the terminal velocity of a falling object, the maximum steady speed it reaches when air resistance balances gravity, from its mass, shape and the air around it. When something falls, gravity speeds it up, but air resistance, or drag, pushes back, and drag grows with speed. Eventually the object falls fast enough that the drag force exactly equals its weight, the net force becomes zero, and it stops accelerating, falling at a constant terminal velocity. This is why a skydiver does not keep speeding up indefinitely, why a feather drifts down gently while a stone plummets, and why parachutes work by hugely increasing drag to slow the descent. Terminal velocity depends on the object's mass, its cross-sectional area facing the airflow, how streamlined it is through the drag coefficient, and the density of the air. This tool computes it. You enter the mass, the cross-sectional area, the drag coefficient, the air density, about 1.225 kilograms per cubic metre at sea level, and gravity, and the calculator returns the terminal velocity in metres per second and kilometres per hour. The results update as you type, so you can see how spreading out to increase area, as a skydiver does, lowers the terminal speed. Use it for physics homework, for understanding skydiving and parachutes, or for any problem involving air resistance. A typical skydiver in a belly-down spread reaches around 50 to 55 metres per second, while in a head-down dive, with much less area, the terminal velocity climbs far higher. The drag coefficient captures shape: a streamlined object has a low value, a flat plate a high one.

Terminal velocity = square root of (2 x m x g / (air density x area x drag coefficient)), with g = 9.81. Larger area or drag lowers the speed.