**Ask a monkey a physics question thread**

[OngBonga]

(Note the maximizing of surface area to the direction of travel.)

I'm gonna be nitpicky and ask if what you actually mean is perpendicular to direction of travel, not just the direction of travel. I mean imagine a pyramid falling upside down at terminal velocity. Well, there's actually a rather large amount of surface area in the direction of travel, more so than if it were falling the right way up with a flat square breaking the fall. Yet upside down it will fall faster, not slower.

[MadMojoMonkey]

I'm gonna be nitpicky and ask if what you actually mean is perpendicular to direction of travel, not just the direction of travel. I mean imagine a pyramid falling upside down at terminal velocity. Well, there's actually a rather large amount of surface area in the direction of travel, more so than if it were falling the right way up with a flat square breaking the fall. Yet upside down it will fall faster, not slower.

You got it right. I was trying to use simple language avoid saying "normal" to mean perpendicular and I forgot how much you love perpendicular.

I mean when looking up from the ground, the big surface area will fall slower than the small surface area, all else equal.

[OngBonga]

You got it right. I was trying to use simple language avoid saying "normal" to mean perpendicular and I forgot how much you love perpendicular.

I mean when looking up from the ground, the big surface area will fall slower than the small surface area, all else equal.

It's not just my love for that word. It was also my pedantry. I imagined a really thin and long pyramid falling down, with its massive surface area facing the direction of travel.... but only a tiny tip perpendicular to it. Such a falling object would be massively aerodynamic.

[MadMojoMonkey]

I mean imagine a pyramid falling upside down at terminal velocity. Well, there's actually a rather large amount of surface area in the direction of travel, more so than if it were falling the right way up with a flat square breaking the fall. Yet upside down it will fall faster, not slower.

Would it? That's not clear to me.

Whatever aerodynamics you gain on the front, you lose on the back... I think.

Fluid dynamics is ridiculously complicated when you do away with the assumptions and start to look at real-world scenarios.