Spacey wrote:Not true, unless you are saying there is not resistance due to wind.
When you are driving down the highway at 100, or a street at 60 ask your passenger to throw a tennis ball directly ball into the air... see what happens. Make sure there is no one behind you before you attempt this.
The underlined part should have said "throw a tennis ball directly up".
Come_Forth wrote:You guys are in some sense both right, when you toss the ball out of the car it will be moving at the speed of the car for a tiny fraction of time until wind resistance acts on it. The key though is that the ball is not going to stay in the air very long. The ball is going to accelerate downwards at 9.8m/s^2. It does not matter the velocity of the object, just as a bullet fired from the same height as a ball is dropped will hit the ground at roughly the same time.
I would argue that as soon as the arm/hand is out the window wind resistance is acting on the ball, because you are not stationary. Air is moving over the car as you drive in it. I would further say that the fraction of time that wind resistance is not acting on the ball is negligible because you can feel air acting on your hand as it goes out the window and thus on the ball partially exposed in your hand.
If you were to toss a ball out of the car the resistance due to air effect is still acting on the ball, in the opposite direction of the mass' momentum, as the ball passes through air and bumps molecules in the air. Once it gets out the window the air is moving in another direction. If you look at it in a high speed camera (aerial view) it will look like the ball is curving as it travels back.
