Fact or Fiction? “A raindrop can fall faster than a cheetah can run.”

Fact or Fiction? “A raindrop can fall faster than a cheetah can run.”

❌ FICTION and it’s not even close.

A cheetah can hit blazing speeds of up to 70 miles per hour, while even the biggest, chunkiest raindrops top out around 25 miles per hour. That means a cheetah could outrun a raindrop without breaking a sweat and probably still have time to stop for a snack.

So why don’t raindrops just keep speeding up until they slam into the ground like tiny watery meteors?

It all comes down to something called terminal velocity.

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Here’s the deal: as a raindrop falls, gravity pulls it down and makes it accelerate. But the faster it goes, the more the air pushes back against it. Eventually, those two forces, the downward pull of gravity and the upward push of air, become perfectly balanced.

When that happens, the raindrop stops accelerating and just falls at a steady cruising speed. Think of it like hitting cruise control on a car: no more speeding up, just a smooth, predictable ride to the ground.

Smaller raindrops drift down slowly like tiny sky sprinkles, while big tropical drops fall faster. But no matter their size, none of them can even come close to the feline Ferrari that is a cheetah.

How does it look in emojis?

🐆 Cheetah: ~70 mph💧 Raindrop: ~18–25 mph⚡ Your odds of staying dry: basically zero.