I got to thinking last night that theoretically, with enough hair, the air resistance would slow you down so that your terminal velocity would be low enough to land unharmed. How long would it need to be? How would one go about calculating this?
I assume you need some kind of drag coefficient and a density for hair to start with. Not sure where to find that information.
I was thinking just freely streaming behind you. I am not sure how this equation accounts for an object that’s incredibly long and thin but I feel confident that the longer it gets, the more drag there is, even if not much more.
I realize the answer might require impossibly long hair but that’s part of why I asked. I want to know just how impossible.
Long and thin may not necessarily have any more drag. It depends on shape, how the airflow follows the body.
A long thin shape with an idealized nose will keep airflow smooth along it’s length, reducing drag.
A shorter shape with the same nose will create low-pressure, turbulent areas just behind the nose, inducing more drag because the air doesn’t flow smoothly along the body.
(I am not an engineer, these are presented simplistically, I’m sure more knowledgeable folks can explain it better).
I feel like this wouldn’t apply to hair because it billows but that’s interesting.
Er, wut?
It doesn’t matter what the object is, fluid dynamics always applies.
Typo, I meant hair. Basically, the surface will be much less smooth due to the hair’s motion. So there might be a lot more drag than like a rocket or something.