Fall

Fall is by far the best season. It's not too hot, not too cold and the leaves falling all around create beautiful views any way you turn. Physics is also all around during fall. To pick one example, falling leaves illustrate many principles of physics. One could pretend air resistance doesn't exist and see a leaf fall 9.8 m/s^2 in a straight line to the ground, but that would take away from the beauty of the leaf falling. One would have to include air resistance, measured by either bv or cv^2, where b and c are constants and v represents velocity of the leaf. Even the inclusion of air resistance, however, wouldn't totally explain the nature of the leaf falling. It would describe the leaf speeding up as it falls, eventually reaching a terminal velocity until it stops on the ground. The irregular shape of the leaf is what needs to be taken into account to truly define the nature of the falling leaf with physics. The irregular shape is what makes the leaf move side to side, accelerating at different rate throughout its fall. If we were to consider a ball falling, air resistance would be easy to calculate, but due to the irregularity of the leaf, the nature of its fall is difficult to explain in terms of physics. It is amazing how complex the physics is behind an object as simple as a falling leaf.