On Tuesday, November 4, 2014 3:04:41 PM UTC-8, Evan Ludeman wrote:
On Tuesday, November 4, 2014 4:38:33 PM UTC-5, Andy Blackburn wrote:
I did the simple physics on this. A volume of air rising at 600 fpm with no other forces acting on it other than gravity has enough momentum to rise an additional 1.6 feet before its upward velocity reaches zero.

I am now officially at a loss as to why thermals go up if there is no temperature difference versus the surrounding air.

9B

That's for an object in a vacuum. The thermal isn't surrounded by a vacuum, it's surrounded by air at almost precisely the same density.

T8

Wouldn't that make it go up even less due to the frictional resistance?