The falling of a metal sphere in a liquid in a graduated cylinder

In the diploma thesis we study the dependance of the terminal velocity of a metal spherical ball that is falling in a liquid in a graduated cylinder on the diameter of the ball. When we are doing experiments in school we assume that the liquid is unconstrained. In the thesis we experimentally study under what conditions (in particular for what ratios between the diameter of the ball and the inner diameter of the cylinder) the liquid may be considered as unconstrained. We also test, if for the liquids with different viscosity the wall effect is more or less important. Experimental part of this thesis is done with steel balls of different diameters, 4 different graduated cylinders and a high-speed video camera. The experiment is done with two liquids, the first is water and the second is glycerine. The data is processed in an open source software called Tracker and for the visualisation programs Excel and Graph are used