Final answer:
To find the time it takes for five stacked coffee filters to fall, one must conduct an experiment. The relationship between terminal velocity and mass or the square of terminal velocity and mass should be plotted to determine linearity and derive conclusions.
Step-by-step explanation:
The experiment of dropping coffee filters is designed to understand how mass affects terminal velocity. In this experiment, if one coffee filter with a mass of 1.2 g takes 45 seconds to reach the ground, stacking more filters together will change the mass of the object without significantly altering the surface area. However, the exact time it would take for five stacked filters to reach the ground cannot be predicted precisely without additional information or experimental results because the relationship between mass and terminal velocity is not linear. The experiment would require you to drop the five stacked filters and record the time to obtain the terminal velocity. This data would then be used to plot the relationship between terminal velocity and mass, and terminal velocity squared and mass, to determine which graph is more linear. The more linear relationship would provide a better understanding of how mass affects the rate of descent.