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Sediment deposited on the surface of a lake settles toward the bottom at its terminal velocity under Stokes' law. According to the source, roughly how long does this settling take to reach the bottom?
ASeveral years
BA few seconds
CAbout one minute
DSeveral days
Answer & Solution
Correct answer: D. Several days
1. Sediment particles are small, so their motion through water is governed by Stokes' law rather than the quadratic drag law.
2. Stokes' law gives them a very small terminal velocity, only a few micrometers per second.
3. At that slow terminal velocity, it can take days to reach the bottom of the lake.
4. A settling time of only seconds or a minute would require a much larger terminal velocity than Stokes' law predicts here.
_Source: OpenStax College Physics (CC BY 4.0), Ch 5 "Further Applications of Newton's Laws: Friction, Drag, and Elasticity", section 5.2 Drag Forces_
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