Falling

For the intents and purpose of this website, there are two forces which affect the speed of a falling object, which are

• the air resistance on the object, and
• the weight of the object, affected by gravity.

When an object falls, it goes through three different stages before it hits the ground.

1. First, the object accelerates. This is because of its weight, creating a resultant force in the down direction.
2. Then, the air resistance increase. Its weight remains the same, but it doesn't accelerate so quickly.
3. The weight then becomes cancelled out by the air resistance, resulting in no resultant force, which is called terminal velocity.

Air resistance has a huge effect on falling objects. In a vacuum (where there's no air resistance,) a feather and a coin will fall at the same speed, however with air resistance, the coin will fall faster.
This is because the air resistance acting on the coin has to be a lot more than on the feather, to slow it down.