If you drop a softball from just above your knee, the kinetic energy of the ball just before it hits the ground is about 1 joule

Explanation:

The average knee height is about 30% of the height of the body. So, if you are 170 cm tall, the knee height would be 0.30(170cm) = 51cm, which is equivalent to 0.51m if we divided by 100.

Now, the total energy at the initial point is

Because it's all potential energy. The softball mass around 0.20kg, using gravity as 9.81, we have

By the conservation of energy theorem, the energy at the final point is the same as the energy of the initial point. It's important to specifiy that the final point is kinetic energy

Therefore, the statement is true.

prolly a beacuse the momentuem the car has increases while going down hill

air exerts forces on falling objects near earth’s surface.

explanation:

the term 'free falls' refer to object that are falling towards the earth, in a situation in which gravity is the only force acting on the object.

for an object in free fall, the acceleration is constant (g, the gravitational acceleration), and so the velocity of the object constantly increases.

for objects near earth's surface, there is always another force acting on the object: the resistance due to the air. this force is opposed to the direction of fall of the object, and it is proportional to the velocity of the object, so as the object falls down, this force increases up to a point when it balances the force of gravity, and the object continues its motion at constant velocity (called terminal velocity). since in this case gravity is not the only force acting on the object, we are not in a situation of free fall.