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It depends on its mass and shape, as well as the fluid it's moving through. Terminal velocity is when the gravitational force (and buoyancy, if it's significant) balances out the drag force caused by the object moving through a fluid. Drag increases with velocity, so only at some given velocity will these forces balance each other.
There's a formula
here, which can be derived from the explanation above. Let's estimate the parameters in this formula.
- As you mentioned below, the average weight is 0.25-1 lb. Taking the average is 0.5 lb, or around 0.25 kg.
- Gravity is 9.81 m/s2
- Density of air is around 1.2 kg/m3
- Area will depend on the orientation the shit is falling in. Drag coefficient depends on the area, as well as the Reynolds number (which I will not get into here). I will estimate a rough area of 50 cm2 (or 0.005 m2) and drag coefficient of 0.5
Working the numbers yields 40 m/s, or around 91 mph.
Your math assumes one cohesive piece that maintains structural integrity all the way down.
The amount of alcohol I would have had to imbibe to find myself on a portaledge renders this assumption dubious at best.
Where the variables and their assumed values for the droppings are:
m = Mass of the droppings (0.5 kg for someone my size and 0.25 kg for all you hobbits)
g = Acceleration due to gravity (9.81 m/s^2)
rho (rho) = Density of air at sea level (\sim 1.204 kg/m^3)
C_d = Drag coefficient. For a smooth sphere, this is typically around 0.47. However, because falling alcohol-affected excretia would deform into a less aerodynamic shape, a more realistic drag coefficient is closer to 1.0 (similar to a flat plate or a highly deformed droplet).
A = Cross-sectional area of the falling object (A = pi r^2).
To get the area, we need the radius of the blobs. After an extreme bout of drinking, based on studies conducted in college, it has a density very close to toilet water, roughly 1,060 kg/m^3.
Radius (r): Derived from the volume of a sphere
Area (A): A = pi r^2
Which yields a cross-sectional area a .00463 m² for 0.25 kg and .00733 for 0.5 kg
Plugging all of that into the Terminal Velocity equation from before we get about 107 km/h for 0.25 kg and 124 km/h for 0.5. Roughly 67 and 74 freedom units per hour for mud pies.
That said, the most common drug used by rock climbers and not acrophobic fly fisherman such as myself, is marijuana. This can have a constipating effect on chronic chronic users. Which would raise the structural integrity, decrease the area, and greatly increase the speed. Although, if said climber stopped using marijuana to prepare for such a climb, their quitting could have the reverse effect on their bomb movement (BM) in which case it would be more like the shat splat discussed previously.
