http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/w...300-year-old-riddle/

Now we can stop worrying about bullet trajectory charts not agreeing with each other!

I wonder if the whole debate about Kinetic energy, momentum, TKO etc. can also be resolved????

As usual, inaccurate reporting by "journalists" looking for a human interest story. Until a mathematical solution like this is peer-reviewed in the global mathematical community, it is just an anecdote. Apparently the solution was available in a 1977 publication, but since that was written by an adult, no mainstream "journalist" would touch it. A 'clue' to the importance of Ray's work is that he only received 2nd place in the national competition. One would think that a truly breakthrough mathematical solution to a 300 year old problem would deserve 1st place....

But the kid is 16 and deserves accolades for his work regardless. Second place in a prestigious competition is not to be sneezed at.

http://www.reddit.com/r/india/...aimed_solution_to_a/



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The last two refernces in the reddit link sums up the situation exactly. There is no such thing as a fundamental solution to a problem which isn't a fundamental property or relationship. To have been so would require that one equation yield the proper answer for any object in any fluid in any gravitational field. If you look at his equation he is holding, it is very simplistic. It apparently only accounts for balls of a relatively large size falling vertically. The constant would be different for each gas and object combination. To be of use, emperical data would be needed reach a numerical solution. This sort of thing has been done for hundreds of years. I think he just combined the effect of gravity and drag into one equation with one constant. It would actually make it harder to work with.