air resistance, again

I should stop complaining about air resistance, but I can't help myself! I am teaching this semester from Kibble & Berkshire, and in Chapter 3 there are problems about air resistance that use speeds of around 100 meters per second and an atmospheric drag law that is proportional to velocity to the first power. I don't think there is any physical system that could have these properties: If you are small enough to have viscosity matter, you can never go 100 meters per second. Well, I guess molecules can go that fast, but (a) that isn't what the authors have in mind, and (b) molecules aren't really well described by continuum mechanics!

Stokes vs ram pressure

Macroscopically, air resistance is ram pressure (proportional to cross-sectional area times velocity squared). Microscopically, drag is Stokes-like (proportional to radius times velocity). Where does the cross-over happen? I didn't have the guts to put that on problem set one of my course for pre-health students, but it will be in around problem set eight. It could be on problem set one, because the transition can be obtained purely by dimensional analysis.

In transport processes, there are often qualitatively different effects working at small scales than at large. Another good example is diffusion vs convection.