How does the shape of an object affect its velocity while it is flowing through water???
First of all, thank you for using the word “affect”, and not “effect”. These two words are commonly misused. The answer is just the same as if the object was falling through air, just a different drag coefficient. Imagine a streamlined Ferrari…and imagine a Mack truck….Now put both in a stream of water and imagine how the water flows around both. In the case of the Ferrari, the water will flow smoothing around the car’s curves. In the case of the Mack truck, the water hits it and bounces around, causing turbulence in the water around it, causing so much drag that the truck is in effect being resisted by the water. In other words, a streamlined object has little resistance to force (gravity, falling through water), so it will fall faster. However, a non-streamlined object (a truck) will fall slower.
