Fit properties for the 90 MCs we studied. (a) Maximum contribution across the MCs of the quadratic term, ΔV_quad = c (Δt/2)² as a function of the linear variation of velocity ΔV_lin = b Δt. Δt is the MC duration, and b and c are the coefficients of Eq. (15) fitted to the velocity data. (b–d) Histograms of the standard deviation of residuals between the velocity fits and the data. The linear, quadratic, and model fits are plotted in light blue, red, and green, respectively.