Body on the hemispherical hill with friction and drag force. A classical problem becoming more realistic with exact and perturbative approaches

TL;DR

This paper extends the classical problem of a body sliding on a hemispherical hill by incorporating air resistance and kinetic friction, providing analytical solutions and analyzing the effects of these forces on the motion outcomes.

Contribution

It introduces exact and perturbative analytical approaches to a more realistic model including drag and friction forces, revealing their significant impact on the system's behavior.

Findings

Drag effects remain significant even with larger friction coefficients.

The transition between flying off and halting is modified by drag forces.

Analytical solutions offer insights into the system's dynamics with added forces.

Abstract

I discuss the influence of adding the air resistance and the kinetic friction to the classical mechanics homework-problem: finding the motion of a body sliding down a hemispherical hill. For a physically realistic ($\propto v^2$) form of drag force thus modified problem interestingly turns out to still admit analytical solutions of motion equations. I counter-intuitively find that even if friction coefficients are much larger than those of drag (as compared in the appropriate units), the drag effects remain significant. I also discuss how the transition between two possible outcomes of the motion (flying off and halting) is modified in the presence of the drag force coefficient with respect to the friction-only problem. I examine the behavior of the system using both the perturbation theory and exact analytical solutions of differential equations, showing that one can gain interesting insights from two different but complementary standpoints.