Volleyball: A New Twist On Terminal Velocity

The terminal velocity problem is a popular classroom example for Calculus instructors.It is often posed in a version that is simplified to the point of being unrealistic.This paper uses a volleyball as the example object and computes terminal velocities under a variety of assumptions.Actual values for the drag coefficient are used and computations are done in Mathematica.The computations illustrate how the drag crisis intervenes and complicates the mathematical analysis.The Mathematica code used is provided in an appendix.No attempt has been made to assess the efficacy of this approach in the calculus classroom.