Quote:
Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq
Well I'm glad you're modest enough to admit you're not going to be winning a Nobel Prize with your posts.
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Precision and accuracy.
---------- Post added at 14:13 ---------- Previous post was at 13:58 ----------
Not quite right. The density is not directly related to how fast it falls. The actual acceleration and terminal velocity of an object in freefall in Earth's atmosphere is directly related to it's weight (which we can safely assume to be directly proportional to mass) compared to it's drag coefficient (which we cannot safely assume is directly proportional to it's density).
Density, at best, is only approximately proportional to drag when considering simple, symmetrical shapes (e.g. a sphere). For anything even slightly more complex, e.g. a cube, drag will vary depending on which side or angle is facing down. Think of a sheet of paper falling vertically, vs. falling horizontally for example. When you get to the drag of complex objects with various sticking out bits there's additional factors to account for such as turbulence, vortexes, and separation. For something as complex as a 15" snowflake it'd be almost impossible to even approximate and could only really be determined accurately through direct measurement.
In any case, even the basic aerodynamics of a huge snowflake vs. a regular one are going to be so different that we can't say they will fall at the same rate, or even a vaguely similar rate.
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Good points, and something I completely forgot to factor in, apologies. After all, feathers indeed fall in fits and starts as its shape means it catches the air at certain points more than others.
And yes, if such a snowflake was created, it would need direct observation to know just exactly how it would've fell. A quick search does say that larger snowflakes appear to fall more slowly in very cold weather as it acts like a parachute, but we can only speculate how a very large snowflake could fall.