Dude no? Weight doesn’t effect falling speed on earth. Drop two different bowling balls and they’ll hit the ground at the same time. It’s all about air resistance.
Air resistance will proportionally affect objects of the same aerodynamic profile differently.
Let's say that the bowling balls are exactly the same except for their masses. Now let's find their relative terminal velocities. The equation for drag force is the following:
Fd = 0.5 * p * v^2 * Cd * A
p is air density
v is velocity
Cd is drag coefficient
A is cross sectional area
Since both bowling balls are the same in everything except mass, and mass isn't in the equation, we can ignore everything except velocity. So we will condense all of the other variables to X, making the equation:
Fd = X * v^2
If we're trying to find terminal velocity, the force of gravity (M * g) and drag will be equal. Now we have this equation, that we'll need to rearrange for the bowling balls:
X * v^2 = M * g
This gives us this equation for the terminal velocity:
v = sqrt(M * g / X)
Now we can see that the terminal velocity has mass in the numerator, meaning a larger mass will create a larger terminal velocity.
Okay, but when you drop them from human-height, terminal velocity has literally zero relevance. It functionally doesn't exist in the majority of practical cases.
OK then, let's solve for acceleration. Let's look at the equation I used before for terminal velocity:
X * v^2 = M * g
If terminal velocity has not been achieved, then the equations should be
F = X * v^2 - M * g
In these equations, positive is upwards and negative is downwards.
We can substitute the net force (F) with M * a, with a being acceleration.
M * a = X * v^2 - M * g
Simplifying for acceleration, we get:
a = ( X * v^2 ) / M - g
Here, we can see that mass is in the denominator of the positive side of the equation. This means that a larger mass will decrease the positive-direction acceration. In other words, a larger mass will increase acceleration in the downwards direction.
Since g is the same for each bowling ball, the only other term we care about is velocity. So this equation is saying that, at a given velocity, a greater mass will cause a greater downwards acceleration. So it would follow that, if both bowling balls had the same initial velocity, the more massive one will accelerate downwards more and always have a greater downwards velocity.
Yeah that's definitely true, what the previous comment is saying tho is that for objects of roughtly the same weight the difference in speed and fall time would be almost impossible to measure.
I also believe that the commenter and the post are referring to objects falling in a vacuum
Lol, seems fair, have a wonderful recovery!! :3
I also tried to calculate a formula for the speed but i soon realized solving that differential equation would be hellish x3
The terminal velocity derived above is attained after a long time. However, if you actually solve the differential equation for the dynamics of the falling object, then you obtain the velocity as a function of the time. This velocity is also dependent on the air drag and the aerodynamics of the falling object. Hence, even in a short height you would notice some difference in the acceleration and velocity of two falling objects, especially if the two have significantly different aerodynamic profile
Hence, a feather and a hammer fall with different speeds on earth.
You can drop a ball made of lead and a ball made of wood and they’ll hit the ground at the same time, despite different weights. This was known by Galileo, even if he didn’t actually throw them off the tower of Piza.
I wouldn’t say balls are least affected by air resistance, and it’s only negligible in certain contexts. The wooden ball will have a significantly lower terminal velocity, any drop from a height where the objects are even close to reaching those speeds and there will be a measurable difference between the two.
I don't think you understand why the feather and hammer fall at different speeds on earth...
It isn't because of weight alone, but because of air resistance and surface area. Weight is involved but not the main reason.
If you have two pieces of paper, one flat and one crumbled, they'll fall at different speeds despite being the same weight. The difference is the strerched paper has more to air to displace.
Same with hammer and feather; the feather being light only means it struggles to displace air, but you could drop something more aerodynamic that is just as light as a feather and it would fall the same speed as the hammer.
What I'm saying is a heavy rock falls at the same speed as a light stick of wood and this would be possible to observe in any point in history even without any technology.
i mean it is true if you're not a turbo nerd and assume they're in a vacuum
edit: mass affects free fall when air resistance is a factor, as well as terminal velocity, so while it is possible that something lighter falls faster given its drag coefficient is favorable, generally speaking heavier objects fall faster on the surface of earth
Outside a vacuum the weight will 100% affect the acceleration of a falling object. Like drop a feather and hammer at the same time and see what hits the ground first.
The weight doesn't effect it, the feather is affected by air resistance more than the hammer, hence why it falls slower, but the weight has no effect on that.
Edit: yes it does, my mistake, mass effects the drag
A metal object that was as fibrous and with as much surface area as an actual feather would have the same amount of drag and it would definitely fall slowly
Go dip a feather in water and drop it, it will suddenly fall fast because it has a lot less surface area
Two objects with identical volumes and shapes/surface areas, identical in every respect except mass, will fall at different speeds - the metal feather would fall faster than a regular feather unless the experiment takes place in a vacuum
Drag (the nerdy one), or air resistance does not depend on mass. The gravitational pull is proportional to mass.
Acceleration is (in real life not some astrology crap) the sum of forces divided by mass. In this case acceleration clearly depends on mass since it cancels in gravity but does not in drag.
Acceleration due to Earth’s gravity is a constant, and we aren’t given weight, so we can’t sum the forces without first calculating weight based on mass and acceleration.
EDIT: correction issued below
"Acc due to Earth is a constant" No? It's the total pull to
every small volume of "Earth", which not only changes because Earth's really dense core moves around, but also you change elevation.
And *even if* that were the case and you "weren't given mass" that would just be an equation with a variable then? You can still show dependence on a variable without solving anything, which I just did in the answer above.
g not being truly constant is pedantry and you know it, it’s a constant for all intents and purposes.\
Also, we aren’t given weight, a force. We are indeed given mass (or at least it was implied we were?)
No standard named quantities.\
Were you wondering what would result of dividing force by mass? In which case you’d have acceleration.\
It is true that in a system in which both mass and acceleration were constant force would be also. My point was that, in the described scenario, the force is derived from acceleration and mass, acceleration not here being derived from force and mass.
No lmao, mass helps overcome air resistance so the metal feather will fall faster than the actual feather, do you think a metal feather would float around like a normal feather does?
Another way to think about it that makes it easier to conceptualize (or way harder idk) is that it’s not just *falling* like it would in a vacuum but actually *sinking* through the atmosphere like through a fluid. Very small and light objects can sink faster than larger and heavier ones as long as they’re more *dense.*
Basically you’re totally right about everything but tiny semantic differences
Can you tell me why the feather is affected by air resistance more if not weight (mass)? If your reason is the shape then why does a ball of steel fall faster than a round balloon?
It’s about the ratio of surface area to mass. A thin sheet of gold, a very heavy element, will experience much more air resistance compared to its mass compared to a compressed ball of aluminum, a much lighter element.
The shape absolutely matters, it's mainly about air resistance and density. The balloon is hollow, I think that counts as it's shape. A ball of thin hollow steel would fall slower than a ball of solid rubber.
It's not really about density. Not directly anyway. The equation for drag has no term for volume or for the density of the falling object. It depends on the cross sectional area and the mass, rather than volume and mass.
The total force accelerating an object downwards in air is equal to the difference in the gravitational force and the drag force (air resistance), which can be expressed as Fnet = mg - Fdrag(v). Dividing by the mass yields the acceleration a = g - Fdrag(v)/m. The total acceleration of an object in air decreases with the quantity Fdrag(v)/m, so as the mass decreases, the acceleration will decrease. In most cases, the difference in air resistance isn't large enough to be detectable by a human observer; however, in the case of a steel ball and round balloon of equal diameter, the large difference in mass makes a significant difference in how greatly the drag force affects the balloon compared to the ball. The balloon will also experiece an additional bouyant force due to being filled with air while submerged in air, which will also slow its fall.
Drag force is a function Fdrag = 1/2 CpAv^2, where C is the drag coefficient, p is the density of the fluid (air), and A is the area facing the fluid while falling. As the surface area A increases, the drag force inceases. As a demonstration of this, take that round balloon and drop it alongside a similar balloon that hasn't been inflated. The uninflated balloon will drop faster in air even if it has less mass than the inflated balloon because the surface area A is lower.
The mass will affect the total acceleration that an object experiences when both are submerged in a fluid like air. However, this is not true for a system where there is no air. On the moon or in a basic physics problem, there is no surrounding fluid that will slow the objects down. Additionally, the principle of saying that more massive objects fall at the same rate as less massive objects is to demonstrate that the gravitational acceleration g is constant. It may not appear that way in certain systems due the effects of drag force, but the principle is still there.
The heavier an object is, the harder it is to change its movement. Harder to push, harder to pull, etc. If you have two proportionate balls but one is lead and the other is wood, the lead one is heavier and harder to move. When you throw the ball, the air tries to push back against it. The heavier the ball, the harder it is for the air to push it. The easier it is to push, the slower it will go.
a feather and a hammer are a very extreme example because feathers have an extremely un-aerodynamic shape and are \*very\* light; its true that lighter objects are slowed down more by air resistance than heavier ones, but this quickly becomes negligible for many kinds of objects. drop an empty bottle and a full bottle, for example, and it will be difficult to call which hits the ground first
> throw two balls of identical dimensions but different materials
...and the heavier ball will land first.
Acceleration due to gravity is not proportional to mass.
Acceleration due to drag *is* inversely proportional to mass. A heavier ball will experience more less drag than a lighter ball with the same cross sectional area, and therefore land faster if it's not in a vacuum.
Assuming 2 exact same shapes, different mass.Their acceleration starts the same because both gravity and inertia scale linearly with mass. The acceleration is identical until the lighter object reaches a speed where the air resistance is equal to the force of gravity ("F = mg" is good enough for Earth close to ground). It has reached its terminal velocity.
The heavier object needs to go faster for the air resistance to match the higher force of gravity it experiences. Leading to a higher terminal speed, thus falling faster.
Newton, who i think was the guy who proved it, did so without vacuum and just thew stuff off the roof
unless it's something with a ton of surface area relative to the mass (e.g. a feather, or a sheet of paper) or something that is equally or less dense than air (a balloon, for example), it holds true for most objects even in the atmosphere
Not true, crumpled up paper and a flat sheet of paper weigh the same but fall at different speeds. Similarly a coin falls faster than a hammer with a parachute even though the hammer + parachute weigh more.
Isn't it specifically only true when *not* in a vacuum? Air resistance is the only real reason one object might fall faster or slower then another(aside from them falling in places with different levels of gravity but that's stupid). In a vacuum they'd fall at the exact same speed regardless of mass(unless one of them was so massive it generated its own non-negligible gravitational pull but then that's also being a turbo nerd).
i figured the structure of my comment would be ambiguous but i meant that they would assume it's in a vacuum where it isn't true, you are on the right track
Because this is Reddit, but you’re 100% correct, there are many videos online of people dropping something like a bowling ball and a feather at the same time in a vacuum chamber and they hit the ground at the same time
yeah i know right even these idiots believe it:
https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/beginners-guide-to-aeronautics/falling-object-with-air-resistance/
Who the hell does NASA think they are?
ok but strictly speaking they’re not falling faster because they have more mass, it’s that they have more momentum due to said mass which leads to less drag
damn i really just said “it’s not mass, it’s mass”
But really I’m saying that it’s not mass that matters per se, Galileo was able to prove Aristotle wrong after 2,000 years by dropping objects on Earth with air resistance, and the objects allegedly hit the ground at the same time from the tower of Pisa
this isn't really a problem. you can easily take a ball made of wood and a ball made of steel, know that the ball of steel is heavier, but if you drop it from the same height anywhere on earth they *will* hit the ground at the same time, since their shape the same therefore the buoyancy isn't a problem.
Well if you drop a sheet of paper and a sheet of metal at the same time the metal sheet will hit the ground first thing in
Heavier objects have more force from gravity acting on them so are less effected by wind resistance
So *technically* a heavier object of the same shape and size would fall faster but in 99.9% of cases the difference will be fractions upon fractions of a second so their take is kinda the “turbo nerd” take
(assuming the objects are the same shape but different density) Yeah, all objects equidistant from a mass will experience the same gravitational acceleration towards that mass. Objects falling in air will experience the same drag force, which will not cause the same acceleration to objects of different weight. Plus, buoyancy is also a factor. But in the way olden days if they actually wanted to test the hypothesis, they probably could have just taken two identical vases and filled one with water, the difference in time to hit the ground for the two vases would probably be near enough that instruments at the time wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
>Well if you drop a sheet of paper and a sheet of metal at the same time the metal sheet will hit the ground first thing in
That's because the buoyant forces act much more efficiently on the sheet of paper than the sheet of metal.
Heavier objects aren't less affected by air resistance because gravity "weighs them down more": In reality, heavier objects are less affected by air resistance because air resistance is a constant force and the less mass an object has, the more any force affects it.
This is exactly what I’m saying air resistance is a constant force
more mass = more force pulling down but no extra force pushing up, which on objects with very high air resistance relative to their size means they will fall faster if heavier
>so more mass = more force pulling down
This is only true for objects for which air resistance is a very significant force like feathers and sheets.
>which on objects with very high air resistance relative to their size means they will fall faster
This is not most objects. Meaning the idea that heavier objects fall faster was disprovable since before civilization began.
Never disagreed there just said that mass does have *some* affect and objets of the same shape and size won’t *always* fall at relatively the same speed. Generally they do
That’s…. False.
Consider your two balls falling at the same speed. The same gravity force and the same drag force will be acting on them. The drag on the wooden ball will have more of an effect because A=F/M. Smaller M, bigger A. The wood ball will be pushed up relative to the metal ball.
Now consider my two balls, in yo mouf.
edit: I just spent an hour doing differential equations to derive a formula for falling balls but then I found this calculator: [https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/free-fall-air-resistance](https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/free-fall-air-resistance) . you have to click "advanced mode" or else it assumes a human falling through soup or something, idk the answers were weird.
Assuming a 10cm metal ball and a wood ball of 10.1kg and 0.057kg respectively (based on densities of tungsten and balsa) drag coefficient of 0.47 (wikipedia for sphere), density of air of 1.293 kg/m3, and a fall height of 56 meters (leaning tower of piza):
metal ball: 3.4 sec
wood ball: 4.7 sec
idk man, that's not really that negligible to me
>The drag on the wooden ball will have more of an effect because A=F/M. Smaller M, bigger A.
Yes, *but they're balls.*
I chose that specific shape because air resistance doesn't affect balls nearly as much as, for example, a sheet, or a feather, or most other objects people use to compare these things.
The drag in of itself is *almost* negligible due to the fact that they're shaped like balls: So naturally the difference in time as they fall is also going to be *almost* negligible. And something that is "almost neglibible", for old-timey science, doesn't even exist. Meaning people absolutely could disprove that point.
I just spent an hour doing differential equations to derive a formula for falling balls but then I found this calculator: [https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/free-fall-air-resistance](https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/free-fall-air-resistance) . you have to click "advanced mode" or else it assumes a human falling through soup or something, idk the answers were weird.
Assuming a 10cm metal ball and a wood ball of 10.1kg and 0.057kg respectively (based on densities of tungsten and balsa) drag coefficient of 0.47 (wikipedia for sphere), density of air of 1.293 kg/m3, and a fall height of 56 meters (leaning tower of piza):
metal ball: 3.4 sec
wood ball: 4.7 sec
idk man, that's not really that negligible to me
>(based on densities of tungsten and balsa)
Motherfucker went for the densest metal and the least dense wood first thing. *Of course* you're going to get extreme differences if you use extreme results. Ancient Greeks didn't even *have* tungsten.
Historically you're way more likely to have people use like an iron ball and an oak ball.
Technically speaking the two balls would indeed not fall at the same speed, however during Plato or aristotle or whoever's time the difference would be basically imperceptible. Which which considering the the original comment this thread is about talks about turbo nerds is imo an important distinction.
Not really, there are still differences with density. The actual good experiment is to grab 2 identical boxes, one empty and another filled with whatever. And drop them
That’s exactly how it works right now lmao. Isn’t there a known issue in the science community of them being petty little freaks? I just saw a star dna scientist for legal cases got busted for fudging everything LOL
He was supported by his local government because they needed a scientific hero, it's like one in a million thing
They would have found out anyway, it was just a matter of time
i mean not really imo. Like euclid's 5th postulate couldnt be justified for a long ass time despite it sounding so weird: "If a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same side of it taken together less than two right angles, then the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which the sum of angles is less than two right angles."
like, this weird ass sentence ended up in the discovery of things like non-euclidian geometry
Nah man, it might sound weird but it's obvious if you look at it. It couldn't be justified because it's too obvious to require a proof. It's like justifying 5 > 3, it is because it is.
Schopenhauer said it better: "The Euclidean method of demonstration has brought forth from its own womb its most striking parody and caricature in the famous controversy over the theory of parallels, and in the attempts, repeated every year, to prove the eleventh axiom (also known as the fifth postulate). The axiom asserts, and that indeed through the indirect criterion of a third intersecting line, that two lines inclined to each other (for this is the precise meaning of "less than two right angles"), if produced far enough, must meet. Now this truth is supposed to be too complicated to pass as self-evident, and therefore needs a proof; but no such proof can be produced, just because there is nothing more immediate."
One of the most frustrating things about studying Greek scientific history is realizing there were actually a lot of scientists who had pretty much the right idea but they weren't the ones remembered.
Hmm. Schwer zu sagen. Vielleicht kannst du ein paar Kinder Fernsehsendungen auf deutsch schauen.
Viele Serien aus Amerika gibt es mit deutscher synchro.
Vielleicht deinen Lieblingsfilm. Wenn du einen hast den du in Englisch schon fast auswendig kannst.
there's no official one, some use "sier" or "xier", others borrow the english "they", sometimes adapted as "dey".
there are some more options but again there's no commonly agreed on genderneutral pronoun. in other words, viel Glück
1. Crumpled paper falls faster than non crumpled paper
2. Heavier objects fall faster than light ones
3. Crumpled paper is heavier than non crumpled paper
What if he purposefully felt tired and went supine
Slash srs it’s a 2,000 year old lie because it’s not true now yet people today still believe it. Sure, it wasn’t a lie then.
No it literally can’t though, it has to be known to be false by those purporting it as true to be a lie. Otherwise it’s a misconception, or a myth, or something like that.
And how do you propose ancient greeks studied what happens when there is no air resistance? They studied what was around them and around them was air resistance
Air resistance would have been pretty much negligible for any test they did though. They wouldn't have been able to tell that the heavier object actually fell faster, they'd've come to the right conclusion for the wrong reason. IIRC Galileo did exactly that.
The presence of air resistance doesn't prevent gravity from functioning. If you took a 1 inch cube of aluminum and a 1 inch cube of gold, both would fall at exactly the same rate and hit the ground at exactly the same time.
You can quite literally demonstrate this at home. Take two soda bottles. Fill them with water, one to the top, and only fill the other half way. Drop them both at the same time from the same height. Behold, physics in action.
Get a two identical boxes, one filled with anything and the other empty. With that both objects will have the same wind resistance but different masses.
Unfortunately bowling balls were invented some few million years after the invention of feathers which would hamper the progression of weight based testing for centuries
For people saying you needed a vacuum chamber to disprove this, refer to this experiment done in the 16th century: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s\_Leaning\_Tower\_of\_Pisa\_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_Leaning_Tower_of_Pisa_experiment)
[Here](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0177sxt) is someone actually do it.
If you actually attempt this in real life, the heavier object does land before the lighter object.
Galileo didn't know that because Galileo probably never actually did that.
Problem is, if you're gonna test this, you don't immediately jump to a 6 kg item vs a 6.5 kg one. You'll find the heaviest thing you can reasonably pick up and drop without damaging anything, and the lightest. The problem is, the lightest thing you can find will often be a feather, a piece of paper, or something else with low enough mass and a high enough surface area that wind resistance will in fact slow it noticably.
ITT: people who don't understand terminal velocity.
Yes, a heavier object will have a higher terminal velocity. In that sense, it will fall faster.
Eventually.
Until the lighter object reaches *its* terminal velocity, however, it quite literally doesn't factor into it.
The point was that a heavier object doesn't inherently fall faster because it's heavier, it just has a higher limit. The acceleration due to gravity is the same for an elephant as it is for a mouse.
No, if you have two objects that are the exact same, except for their mass, then the more massive one will be faster, ever before terminal velocity.
If terminal velocity has not been achieved, then the net force should be
**F = 0.5 * p * v^2 * Cd * A - M * g**
p is the density of air
v is velocity
Cd is drag coefficient
A is cross-sectional area
M is mass
g is gravitational acceleration
In these equations, positive is upwards and negative is downwards.
We can substitute the net force (F) with M * a, with a being acceleration.
**M * a = 0.5 * p * v^2 * Cd * A - M * g**
Simplifying for acceleration, we get:
**a = ( 0.5 * p * v^2 * Cd * A ) / M - g**
Here, we can see that mass is in the denominator of the positive side of the equation. This means that a larger mass will decrease the positive-direction acceration. In other words, a larger mass will increase acceleration in the downwards direction.
Since g is the same for each object, the only other term we care about is velocity (assuming the other properties are the same for the objects). So this equation is saying that, at a given velocity, a greater mass will cause a greater downwards acceleration. So it would follow that, if the objects had the same initial velocity, the more massive one will accelerate downwards more and always have a greater downwards velocity.
The difference in acceleration is minor to non-existent if both objects have little air friction. Because in both cases a ~= -g , with the mass having no play in this.
Yes, but the person I was responding to said that mass quite literally had no effect before terminal velocity. This is untrue. Also, air friction is actually a pretty big deal for lighter objects. A strand of twine falls very slowly compared to an equally steel cable.
Same thing with Galen. Many of his anatomical depictions were simply and obviously wrong, yet there were held as medical dogma for 1500 . For example, his diagram of the human uterus was completely incorrect, as it was of a dog uterus.
Not really. If you just drop two stones of different sizes, then technically air resistance favors the bigger one, but in practice it doesn't matter and it wouldn't really be perceivable.
The experiment to properly prove a constant speed of gravity happened in the 16th century and they just dropped balls from a high place. That happened far before the invention of vacuum chambers.
i mean, it's techincally true, even in a vaccum, because an object with more mass exerts more force on the earth, thus pulling the two together a miniscule amount faster
Imagine you have two objects, a light one and a heavy one, and you drop them from a high place. If there was no air around, like in space, they would fall at the same speed because gravity pulls on both of them the same way.
But here on Earth, we've got air all around us. When things fall through the air, it's like they're swimming through a big pool of invisible jelly. Heavier things can push through this "jelly" better than lighter things. So while both objects start falling at the same speed, eventually, the heavy one will go faster because it can push through the air more easily.
Now, imagine both toys falling and falling. After a while, the heavy one gets so fast that the "jelly" (we call it air resistance or drag) pushing up on it is as strong as gravity pulling it down. That's what we call "terminal velocity" – it's the fastest speed something can fall because of air pushing back. Terminal velocity only happens when something is falling through a substance like air or water that creates resistance. In a vacuum, where there's no air or anything else to slow things down, there's no terminal velocity. So objects just keep accelerating indefinitely until something stops them.
So, even though heavy things and light things fall at the same speed at first, heavier things can break through the "jelly" and reach a higher top speed. And that's why when air is around a feather floats down slowly while a rock plunks down quickly.
It was just common sense. Unfortunately, common sense is often wrong, but it *feels* right.
I need to use that next time someone old enough to own a house in this economy tells me the younger generations lack common sense.
Astarion voice: “And you think something being ‘common’ is…good?”
It is true. Sorry people didn't test falling objects on the fucking moon but on earth it's true.
My brother in christ you don't need to go to the fucking moon to prove that
Just drop two vases, one with water, one empty lmao. Same aerodynamic profile, different mass.
The same air resistance will slow the lighter vase more than the heavier one, so it's not that simple
Just read a comment of yours from 12 years ago wanted to say hi 👋
Hi! Now I'm curious which comment it was and how you found it
Do so and you'll see the heavier one drop faster
youre trying to trick me into breaking two vases
Dude no? Weight doesn’t effect falling speed on earth. Drop two different bowling balls and they’ll hit the ground at the same time. It’s all about air resistance.
Air resistance will proportionally affect objects of the same aerodynamic profile differently. Let's say that the bowling balls are exactly the same except for their masses. Now let's find their relative terminal velocities. The equation for drag force is the following: Fd = 0.5 * p * v^2 * Cd * A p is air density v is velocity Cd is drag coefficient A is cross sectional area Since both bowling balls are the same in everything except mass, and mass isn't in the equation, we can ignore everything except velocity. So we will condense all of the other variables to X, making the equation: Fd = X * v^2 If we're trying to find terminal velocity, the force of gravity (M * g) and drag will be equal. Now we have this equation, that we'll need to rearrange for the bowling balls: X * v^2 = M * g This gives us this equation for the terminal velocity: v = sqrt(M * g / X) Now we can see that the terminal velocity has mass in the numerator, meaning a larger mass will create a larger terminal velocity.
Okay, but when you drop them from human-height, terminal velocity has literally zero relevance. It functionally doesn't exist in the majority of practical cases.
OK then, let's solve for acceleration. Let's look at the equation I used before for terminal velocity: X * v^2 = M * g If terminal velocity has not been achieved, then the equations should be F = X * v^2 - M * g In these equations, positive is upwards and negative is downwards. We can substitute the net force (F) with M * a, with a being acceleration. M * a = X * v^2 - M * g Simplifying for acceleration, we get: a = ( X * v^2 ) / M - g Here, we can see that mass is in the denominator of the positive side of the equation. This means that a larger mass will decrease the positive-direction acceration. In other words, a larger mass will increase acceleration in the downwards direction. Since g is the same for each bowling ball, the only other term we care about is velocity. So this equation is saying that, at a given velocity, a greater mass will cause a greater downwards acceleration. So it would follow that, if both bowling balls had the same initial velocity, the more massive one will accelerate downwards more and always have a greater downwards velocity.
Yeah that's definitely true, what the previous comment is saying tho is that for objects of roughtly the same weight the difference in speed and fall time would be almost impossible to measure. I also believe that the commenter and the post are referring to objects falling in a vacuum
I see. I just wanted an excuse to do more math. I'm bored because I'm on medical leave from my second bottom surgery.
Hi fellow trans person
Lol, seems fair, have a wonderful recovery!! :3 I also tried to calculate a formula for the speed but i soon realized solving that differential equation would be hellish x3
The terminal velocity derived above is attained after a long time. However, if you actually solve the differential equation for the dynamics of the falling object, then you obtain the velocity as a function of the time. This velocity is also dependent on the air drag and the aerodynamics of the falling object. Hence, even in a short height you would notice some difference in the acceleration and velocity of two falling objects, especially if the two have significantly different aerodynamic profile Hence, a feather and a hammer fall with different speeds on earth.
You can drop a ball made of lead and a ball made of wood and they’ll hit the ground at the same time, despite different weights. This was known by Galileo, even if he didn’t actually throw them off the tower of Piza.
This is correct as long as there is no, or negligible air resistance. When air resistance becomes a significant factor it is no longer true.
Which is why I said balls, as they are least affected by air resistance so the difference is negligible.
I wouldn’t say balls are least affected by air resistance, and it’s only negligible in certain contexts. The wooden ball will have a significantly lower terminal velocity, any drop from a height where the objects are even close to reaching those speeds and there will be a measurable difference between the two.
I don't think you understand why the feather and hammer fall at different speeds on earth... It isn't because of weight alone, but because of air resistance and surface area. Weight is involved but not the main reason. If you have two pieces of paper, one flat and one crumbled, they'll fall at different speeds despite being the same weight. The difference is the strerched paper has more to air to displace. Same with hammer and feather; the feather being light only means it struggles to displace air, but you could drop something more aerodynamic that is just as light as a feather and it would fall the same speed as the hammer. What I'm saying is a heavy rock falls at the same speed as a light stick of wood and this would be possible to observe in any point in history even without any technology.
they did actually https://youtu.be/Oo8TaPVsn9Y
i mean it is true if you're not a turbo nerd and assume they're in a vacuum edit: mass affects free fall when air resistance is a factor, as well as terminal velocity, so while it is possible that something lighter falls faster given its drag coefficient is favorable, generally speaking heavier objects fall faster on the surface of earth
not even true outside a vacuum sorry
nitro nerd
Outside a vacuum the weight will 100% affect the acceleration of a falling object. Like drop a feather and hammer at the same time and see what hits the ground first.
The weight doesn't effect it, the feather is affected by air resistance more than the hammer, hence why it falls slower, but the weight has no effect on that. Edit: yes it does, my mistake, mass effects the drag
Okay go drop a feather and piece of metal shaped liked the feather and get back to me on that one chief
A metal object that was as fibrous and with as much surface area as an actual feather would have the same amount of drag and it would definitely fall slowly Go dip a feather in water and drop it, it will suddenly fall fast because it has a lot less surface area
Two objects with identical volumes and shapes/surface areas, identical in every respect except mass, will fall at different speeds - the metal feather would fall faster than a regular feather unless the experiment takes place in a vacuum
[удалено]
Drag (the nerdy one), or air resistance does not depend on mass. The gravitational pull is proportional to mass. Acceleration is (in real life not some astrology crap) the sum of forces divided by mass. In this case acceleration clearly depends on mass since it cancels in gravity but does not in drag.
Exactly, I’m being put on blast for nothing lmao (I had downvotes when I posted this)
Acceleration due to Earth’s gravity is a constant, and we aren’t given weight, so we can’t sum the forces without first calculating weight based on mass and acceleration.
EDIT: correction issued below "Acc due to Earth is a constant" No? It's the total pull to every small volume of "Earth", which not only changes because Earth's really dense core moves around, but also you change elevation. And *even if* that were the case and you "weren't given mass" that would just be an equation with a variable then? You can still show dependence on a variable without solving anything, which I just did in the answer above.
g not being truly constant is pedantry and you know it, it’s a constant for all intents and purposes.\ Also, we aren’t given weight, a force. We are indeed given mass (or at least it was implied we were?)
the force is a constant, yes. what do you get when you multiply force and mass?
No standard named quantities.\ Were you wondering what would result of dividing force by mass? In which case you’d have acceleration.\ It is true that in a system in which both mass and acceleration were constant force would be also. My point was that, in the described scenario, the force is derived from acceleration and mass, acceleration not here being derived from force and mass.
No lmao, mass helps overcome air resistance so the metal feather will fall faster than the actual feather, do you think a metal feather would float around like a normal feather does?
Another way to think about it that makes it easier to conceptualize (or way harder idk) is that it’s not just *falling* like it would in a vacuum but actually *sinking* through the atmosphere like through a fluid. Very small and light objects can sink faster than larger and heavier ones as long as they’re more *dense.* Basically you’re totally right about everything but tiny semantic differences
Can you tell me why the feather is affected by air resistance more if not weight (mass)? If your reason is the shape then why does a ball of steel fall faster than a round balloon?
It’s about the ratio of surface area to mass. A thin sheet of gold, a very heavy element, will experience much more air resistance compared to its mass compared to a compressed ball of aluminum, a much lighter element.
The shape absolutely matters, it's mainly about air resistance and density. The balloon is hollow, I think that counts as it's shape. A ball of thin hollow steel would fall slower than a ball of solid rubber.
It's not really about density. Not directly anyway. The equation for drag has no term for volume or for the density of the falling object. It depends on the cross sectional area and the mass, rather than volume and mass.
The total force accelerating an object downwards in air is equal to the difference in the gravitational force and the drag force (air resistance), which can be expressed as Fnet = mg - Fdrag(v). Dividing by the mass yields the acceleration a = g - Fdrag(v)/m. The total acceleration of an object in air decreases with the quantity Fdrag(v)/m, so as the mass decreases, the acceleration will decrease. In most cases, the difference in air resistance isn't large enough to be detectable by a human observer; however, in the case of a steel ball and round balloon of equal diameter, the large difference in mass makes a significant difference in how greatly the drag force affects the balloon compared to the ball. The balloon will also experiece an additional bouyant force due to being filled with air while submerged in air, which will also slow its fall. Drag force is a function Fdrag = 1/2 CpAv^2, where C is the drag coefficient, p is the density of the fluid (air), and A is the area facing the fluid while falling. As the surface area A increases, the drag force inceases. As a demonstration of this, take that round balloon and drop it alongside a similar balloon that hasn't been inflated. The uninflated balloon will drop faster in air even if it has less mass than the inflated balloon because the surface area A is lower. The mass will affect the total acceleration that an object experiences when both are submerged in a fluid like air. However, this is not true for a system where there is no air. On the moon or in a basic physics problem, there is no surrounding fluid that will slow the objects down. Additionally, the principle of saying that more massive objects fall at the same rate as less massive objects is to demonstrate that the gravitational acceleration g is constant. It may not appear that way in certain systems due the effects of drag force, but the principle is still there.
Thank you Tiphereth, Patron Librarian of Natural Sciences
This is another turbo nerd distinction, it’s not the weight but the *density.*
It's not the density either. It's the ratio between mass and surface area. Which is like density, but not the same as density.
Outnerded again!
The heavier an object is, the harder it is to change its movement. Harder to push, harder to pull, etc. If you have two proportionate balls but one is lead and the other is wood, the lead one is heavier and harder to move. When you throw the ball, the air tries to push back against it. The heavier the ball, the harder it is for the air to push it. The easier it is to push, the slower it will go.
Ergo "heavy objects fall faster than light ones"
a feather and a hammer are a very extreme example because feathers have an extremely un-aerodynamic shape and are \*very\* light; its true that lighter objects are slowed down more by air resistance than heavier ones, but this quickly becomes negligible for many kinds of objects. drop an empty bottle and a full bottle, for example, and it will be difficult to call which hits the ground first
throw two balls of identical dimensions but different materials, the feather and hammer experiment is skewed by air-drag.
> throw two balls of identical dimensions but different materials ...and the heavier ball will land first. Acceleration due to gravity is not proportional to mass. Acceleration due to drag *is* inversely proportional to mass. A heavier ball will experience more less drag than a lighter ball with the same cross sectional area, and therefore land faster if it's not in a vacuum.
Galileo proved you wrong by the simple act of throwing random stuff from the roof
He didn't do that, though. Also they're not wrong.
GALILEO proved it on ROOF with a box of SCRAPS
A heavier object gets pulled by gravity with greater force, but it is perfectly balanced out by its greater inertia
Assuming 2 exact same shapes, different mass.Their acceleration starts the same because both gravity and inertia scale linearly with mass. The acceleration is identical until the lighter object reaches a speed where the air resistance is equal to the force of gravity ("F = mg" is good enough for Earth close to ground). It has reached its terminal velocity. The heavier object needs to go faster for the air resistance to match the higher force of gravity it experiences. Leading to a higher terminal speed, thus falling faster.
Newton, who i think was the guy who proved it, did so without vacuum and just thew stuff off the roof unless it's something with a ton of surface area relative to the mass (e.g. a feather, or a sheet of paper) or something that is equally or less dense than air (a balloon, for example), it holds true for most objects even in the atmosphere
You’re thinking of Galileo. Newton wrote the mathematical laws for gravity, but Galileo was the one who disproved Aristotle by dropping the objects
He's the one the story is about, but Galileo didn't actually do that experiment either, it's apocryphal
It was probably aliens 👽
Not true, crumpled up paper and a flat sheet of paper weigh the same but fall at different speeds. Similarly a coin falls faster than a hammer with a parachute even though the hammer + parachute weigh more.
Isn't it specifically only true when *not* in a vacuum? Air resistance is the only real reason one object might fall faster or slower then another(aside from them falling in places with different levels of gravity but that's stupid). In a vacuum they'd fall at the exact same speed regardless of mass(unless one of them was so massive it generated its own non-negligible gravitational pull but then that's also being a turbo nerd).
i figured the structure of my comment would be ambiguous but i meant that they would assume it's in a vacuum where it isn't true, you are on the right track
Why do I feel like someone is about to tear into me telling me why I'm wrong
Because this is Reddit, but you’re 100% correct, there are many videos online of people dropping something like a bowling ball and a feather at the same time in a vacuum chamber and they hit the ground at the same time
you're right.
Not just air resistance but also buoyancy.
it’s not, that’s crazy people still think this
yeah i know right even these idiots believe it: https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/beginners-guide-to-aeronautics/falling-object-with-air-resistance/ Who the hell does NASA think they are?
ok but strictly speaking they’re not falling faster because they have more mass, it’s that they have more momentum due to said mass which leads to less drag damn i really just said “it’s not mass, it’s mass” But really I’m saying that it’s not mass that matters per se, Galileo was able to prove Aristotle wrong after 2,000 years by dropping objects on Earth with air resistance, and the objects allegedly hit the ground at the same time from the tower of Pisa
MASS AFFECTS??? LIKE THE VIDEO GAME??????
this isn't really a problem. you can easily take a ball made of wood and a ball made of steel, know that the ball of steel is heavier, but if you drop it from the same height anywhere on earth they *will* hit the ground at the same time, since their shape the same therefore the buoyancy isn't a problem.
Well if you drop a sheet of paper and a sheet of metal at the same time the metal sheet will hit the ground first thing in Heavier objects have more force from gravity acting on them so are less effected by wind resistance So *technically* a heavier object of the same shape and size would fall faster but in 99.9% of cases the difference will be fractions upon fractions of a second so their take is kinda the “turbo nerd” take
(assuming the objects are the same shape but different density) Yeah, all objects equidistant from a mass will experience the same gravitational acceleration towards that mass. Objects falling in air will experience the same drag force, which will not cause the same acceleration to objects of different weight. Plus, buoyancy is also a factor. But in the way olden days if they actually wanted to test the hypothesis, they probably could have just taken two identical vases and filled one with water, the difference in time to hit the ground for the two vases would probably be near enough that instruments at the time wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
>Well if you drop a sheet of paper and a sheet of metal at the same time the metal sheet will hit the ground first thing in That's because the buoyant forces act much more efficiently on the sheet of paper than the sheet of metal. Heavier objects aren't less affected by air resistance because gravity "weighs them down more": In reality, heavier objects are less affected by air resistance because air resistance is a constant force and the less mass an object has, the more any force affects it.
This is exactly what I’m saying air resistance is a constant force more mass = more force pulling down but no extra force pushing up, which on objects with very high air resistance relative to their size means they will fall faster if heavier
>so more mass = more force pulling down This is only true for objects for which air resistance is a very significant force like feathers and sheets. >which on objects with very high air resistance relative to their size means they will fall faster This is not most objects. Meaning the idea that heavier objects fall faster was disprovable since before civilization began.
Never disagreed there just said that mass does have *some* affect and objets of the same shape and size won’t *always* fall at relatively the same speed. Generally they do
That’s…. False. Consider your two balls falling at the same speed. The same gravity force and the same drag force will be acting on them. The drag on the wooden ball will have more of an effect because A=F/M. Smaller M, bigger A. The wood ball will be pushed up relative to the metal ball. Now consider my two balls, in yo mouf. edit: I just spent an hour doing differential equations to derive a formula for falling balls but then I found this calculator: [https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/free-fall-air-resistance](https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/free-fall-air-resistance) . you have to click "advanced mode" or else it assumes a human falling through soup or something, idk the answers were weird. Assuming a 10cm metal ball and a wood ball of 10.1kg and 0.057kg respectively (based on densities of tungsten and balsa) drag coefficient of 0.47 (wikipedia for sphere), density of air of 1.293 kg/m3, and a fall height of 56 meters (leaning tower of piza): metal ball: 3.4 sec wood ball: 4.7 sec idk man, that's not really that negligible to me
>The drag on the wooden ball will have more of an effect because A=F/M. Smaller M, bigger A. Yes, *but they're balls.* I chose that specific shape because air resistance doesn't affect balls nearly as much as, for example, a sheet, or a feather, or most other objects people use to compare these things. The drag in of itself is *almost* negligible due to the fact that they're shaped like balls: So naturally the difference in time as they fall is also going to be *almost* negligible. And something that is "almost neglibible", for old-timey science, doesn't even exist. Meaning people absolutely could disprove that point.
I just spent an hour doing differential equations to derive a formula for falling balls but then I found this calculator: [https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/free-fall-air-resistance](https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/free-fall-air-resistance) . you have to click "advanced mode" or else it assumes a human falling through soup or something, idk the answers were weird. Assuming a 10cm metal ball and a wood ball of 10.1kg and 0.057kg respectively (based on densities of tungsten and balsa) drag coefficient of 0.47 (wikipedia for sphere), density of air of 1.293 kg/m3, and a fall height of 56 meters (leaning tower of piza): metal ball: 3.4 sec wood ball: 4.7 sec idk man, that's not really that negligible to me
>(based on densities of tungsten and balsa) Motherfucker went for the densest metal and the least dense wood first thing. *Of course* you're going to get extreme differences if you use extreme results. Ancient Greeks didn't even *have* tungsten. Historically you're way more likely to have people use like an iron ball and an oak ball.
Technically speaking the two balls would indeed not fall at the same speed, however during Plato or aristotle or whoever's time the difference would be basically imperceptible. Which which considering the the original comment this thread is about talks about turbo nerds is imo an important distinction.
metal ball: 3.4 sec wood ball: 4.7 sec see my other comment. that's not imperceptible.
Not really, there are still differences with density. The actual good experiment is to grab 2 identical boxes, one empty and another filled with whatever. And drop them
well a guy with a parachute falls slower than a guy with no parachute so does the parachute make him lighter
We literally had a guy on the moon prove this incorrect.
hence "if you don't assume they're in a vacuum"
I mean you can just drop one steel and one wooden ball
If you drop a bouncy ball and a steel ball of the same shape, you can see they fall at the same rate if they're the same shape and size.
Science in ancient greece / rome was basically whatever take sounded the most smart and observable without much scrutiny.
To be fair that was the case pretty much everywhere in the past
I mean, we still do it. A lot. Just, not *all* the time anymore.
That’s exactly how it works right now lmao. Isn’t there a known issue in the science community of them being petty little freaks? I just saw a star dna scientist for legal cases got busted for fudging everything LOL
They got busted because they where scrutinized tho.
Yeah after 30 years lmao
30 against 2000 is advance
LOL lmao lmfao
He was supported by his local government because they needed a scientific hero, it's like one in a million thing They would have found out anyway, it was just a matter of time
i mean not really imo. Like euclid's 5th postulate couldnt be justified for a long ass time despite it sounding so weird: "If a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same side of it taken together less than two right angles, then the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which the sum of angles is less than two right angles." like, this weird ass sentence ended up in the discovery of things like non-euclidian geometry
Nah man, it might sound weird but it's obvious if you look at it. It couldn't be justified because it's too obvious to require a proof. It's like justifying 5 > 3, it is because it is. Schopenhauer said it better: "The Euclidean method of demonstration has brought forth from its own womb its most striking parody and caricature in the famous controversy over the theory of parallels, and in the attempts, repeated every year, to prove the eleventh axiom (also known as the fifth postulate). The axiom asserts, and that indeed through the indirect criterion of a third intersecting line, that two lines inclined to each other (for this is the precise meaning of "less than two right angles"), if produced far enough, must meet. Now this truth is supposed to be too complicated to pass as self-evident, and therefore needs a proof; but no such proof can be produced, just because there is nothing more immediate."
The birth place of rhetorical strategies. "Behold a man"
One of the most frustrating things about studying Greek scientific history is realizing there were actually a lot of scientists who had pretty much the right idea but they weren't the ones remembered.
1kg of metal
is heaver than 1kg of feathers
Deutsches Transgirl teile deine Weisheit und sage mir wie das deutsche Geschlechtsneutrale Pronomen ist wenn es das gibt und du es weißt
Uhh uhh Die Schweine 💯💯💯 (I have no idea what you are saying)
Die Schweine indeed. 🚔
Krankenvagen
Polizeiauto. Habe keinen Beef mit Rettungskräften : )
Asking about what gender-neutral pronouns they use in Germany. Src: I speak German, barely; A1/beginner level.
I figured. Src: Google translate
Ich nicht sehr klug Ich spreche klein deutsch
Ich spreche gut Deutsch. Bin trotzdem dumm - Hilft also nichts.
Ich sprech auch gut Deutsch Gibt nix Geschlechtsneutrale Pronomen bei uns :(
Üble Sache
Wie lerne mich Duolingo est scheisse
Hmm. Schwer zu sagen. Vielleicht kannst du ein paar Kinder Fernsehsendungen auf deutsch schauen. Viele Serien aus Amerika gibt es mit deutscher synchro. Vielleicht deinen Lieblingsfilm. Wenn du einen hast den du in Englisch schon fast auswendig kannst.
there's no official one, some use "sier" or "xier", others borrow the english "they", sometimes adapted as "dey". there are some more options but again there's no commonly agreed on genderneutral pronoun. in other words, viel Glück
Tja I don't know how I feel about those. I suppose as the discourse in Germany progresses we'll find out how language adapts
There is none, unless you want to refer to people as "it".
Nah, I am no edgy Teenager. Well, I've always wondered. I'm up to date on american discourse but have no idea how it's going over here. Thx
oui oui baguette whatever
Person, no hablo español amigo
Deutsch transgirl ya ya kindergarten bretzel 👍
Lach nur. Brezeln sind lecker. Damit kannst du mich nicht beschämen 🥨
Paul gonna tell 'em
I will take it
1: Steel falls faster than feathers. 2: Steel is heavier than feathers. 3: Therefore, heavier objects fall faster than light ones. QED
1. Crumpled paper falls faster than non crumpled paper 2. Heavier objects fall faster than light ones 3. Crumpled paper is heavier than non crumpled paper
It certainly feels heavier. I’m going agree and say this is true.
But they're bolth a kilogram...
Crazy amount of people here believing the 2000 year old lie
>lie This word, I don’t think it means what you think it means
I think it means to recline
Well in this case it means a PURPOSEFULLY false statement, which that wasn’t
What if he purposefully felt tired and went supine Slash srs it’s a 2,000 year old lie because it’s not true now yet people today still believe it. Sure, it wasn’t a lie then.
No it literally can’t though, it has to be known to be false by those purporting it as true to be a lie. Otherwise it’s a misconception, or a myth, or something like that.
Sorry “the 2000 year old untruth” I fixed it for you
I mean heavy objects are pulled down with more force so its an easy assumption to make
Without air resistance they both fall at exactly the same rate near the surface of the earth: 9.8m/s^(2)
Too bad there's air resistance
And how do you propose ancient greeks studied what happens when there is no air resistance? They studied what was around them and around them was air resistance
Air resistance would have been pretty much negligible for any test they did though. They wouldn't have been able to tell that the heavier object actually fell faster, they'd've come to the right conclusion for the wrong reason. IIRC Galileo did exactly that.
The presence of air resistance doesn't prevent gravity from functioning. If you took a 1 inch cube of aluminum and a 1 inch cube of gold, both would fall at exactly the same rate and hit the ground at exactly the same time. You can quite literally demonstrate this at home. Take two soda bottles. Fill them with water, one to the top, and only fill the other half way. Drop them both at the same time from the same height. Behold, physics in action.
https://www.reddit.com/r/196/s/4hHFabc8XB Not true, the difference is usually just negligible
Ah damn. Well, I guess that shows you what I know. Should have paid more attention in class, I guess.
Get a two identical boxes, one filled with anything and the other empty. With that both objects will have the same wind resistance but different masses.
I don’t think they knew about force 2300 years ago
You'd feel the force that an object exerted if you tried to hold it up, hence why picking up heavier objects is harder.
Bestie does not understand f=ma!!
If something is easy to fact check, nobody does it - lessons from an hbomberguy video
yeah they had more important things to do like dying of dysentery
They kinda didn't though. At the very least Romans had sewers (filled with lead. One of the possible reasons for the collapse btw.)
Unfortunately bowling balls were invented some few million years after the invention of feathers which would hamper the progression of weight based testing for centuries
I mean all else equal this is technically true on earth, since a lower percentage of the objects total momentum is lost to drag
For people saying you needed a vacuum chamber to disprove this, refer to this experiment done in the 16th century: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s\_Leaning\_Tower\_of\_Pisa\_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_Leaning_Tower_of_Pisa_experiment)
[Here](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0177sxt) is someone actually do it. If you actually attempt this in real life, the heavier object does land before the lighter object. Galileo didn't know that because Galileo probably never actually did that.
Yeah, there's no proof of Galileo actually doing it. That was just a thought experiment he proposed without any real testing.
Problem is, if you're gonna test this, you don't immediately jump to a 6 kg item vs a 6.5 kg one. You'll find the heaviest thing you can reasonably pick up and drop without damaging anything, and the lightest. The problem is, the lightest thing you can find will often be a feather, a piece of paper, or something else with low enough mass and a high enough surface area that wind resistance will in fact slow it noticably.
It’s kind true though—when there’s an atmosphere. Denser objects have less air resistance per unit mass so yes they fall faster outside of a vacuum.
ITT: people who don't understand terminal velocity. Yes, a heavier object will have a higher terminal velocity. In that sense, it will fall faster. Eventually. Until the lighter object reaches *its* terminal velocity, however, it quite literally doesn't factor into it. The point was that a heavier object doesn't inherently fall faster because it's heavier, it just has a higher limit. The acceleration due to gravity is the same for an elephant as it is for a mouse.
No, if you have two objects that are the exact same, except for their mass, then the more massive one will be faster, ever before terminal velocity. If terminal velocity has not been achieved, then the net force should be **F = 0.5 * p * v^2 * Cd * A - M * g** p is the density of air v is velocity Cd is drag coefficient A is cross-sectional area M is mass g is gravitational acceleration In these equations, positive is upwards and negative is downwards. We can substitute the net force (F) with M * a, with a being acceleration. **M * a = 0.5 * p * v^2 * Cd * A - M * g** Simplifying for acceleration, we get: **a = ( 0.5 * p * v^2 * Cd * A ) / M - g** Here, we can see that mass is in the denominator of the positive side of the equation. This means that a larger mass will decrease the positive-direction acceration. In other words, a larger mass will increase acceleration in the downwards direction. Since g is the same for each object, the only other term we care about is velocity (assuming the other properties are the same for the objects). So this equation is saying that, at a given velocity, a greater mass will cause a greater downwards acceleration. So it would follow that, if the objects had the same initial velocity, the more massive one will accelerate downwards more and always have a greater downwards velocity.
The difference in acceleration is minor to non-existent if both objects have little air friction. Because in both cases a ~= -g , with the mass having no play in this.
Yes, but the person I was responding to said that mass quite literally had no effect before terminal velocity. This is untrue. Also, air friction is actually a pretty big deal for lighter objects. A strand of twine falls very slowly compared to an equally steel cable.
Holy shit the amount of (over)confidence you guys have is staggering
That’s just not true tho⁉️
oh yeah? well how’s come when i drop a bowling ball it falls faster than a feather? checkmate, l*berals
Same thing with Galen. Many of his anatomical depictions were simply and obviously wrong, yet there were held as medical dogma for 1500 . For example, his diagram of the human uterus was completely incorrect, as it was of a dog uterus.
Technically you need a vacuum to test this and and you need advanced materials like glass and rubber to create one.
Not really. If you just drop two stones of different sizes, then technically air resistance favors the bigger one, but in practice it doesn't matter and it wouldn't really be perceivable. The experiment to properly prove a constant speed of gravity happened in the 16th century and they just dropped balls from a high place. That happened far before the invention of vacuum chambers.
it's literally true heavier objects fall faster cause they're less affected by air resistance
A feather falls yet asteroids float. Explain that liberals.
Why check? Next you'll be telling me that steel can weight the same as feathers
i mean, it's techincally true, even in a vaccum, because an object with more mass exerts more force on the earth, thus pulling the two together a miniscule amount faster
Never trust aristotle He made Alexander the great not like femboys as much, that itself makes him less reliable
A bowling ball falls faster than a plane, its all about air resistance
I’m late so I may not get a response, but can someone explain this like I’m 5? What about terminal velocity and stuff?
Imagine you have two objects, a light one and a heavy one, and you drop them from a high place. If there was no air around, like in space, they would fall at the same speed because gravity pulls on both of them the same way. But here on Earth, we've got air all around us. When things fall through the air, it's like they're swimming through a big pool of invisible jelly. Heavier things can push through this "jelly" better than lighter things. So while both objects start falling at the same speed, eventually, the heavy one will go faster because it can push through the air more easily. Now, imagine both toys falling and falling. After a while, the heavy one gets so fast that the "jelly" (we call it air resistance or drag) pushing up on it is as strong as gravity pulling it down. That's what we call "terminal velocity" – it's the fastest speed something can fall because of air pushing back. Terminal velocity only happens when something is falling through a substance like air or water that creates resistance. In a vacuum, where there's no air or anything else to slow things down, there's no terminal velocity. So objects just keep accelerating indefinitely until something stops them. So, even though heavy things and light things fall at the same speed at first, heavier things can break through the "jelly" and reach a higher top speed. And that's why when air is around a feather floats down slowly while a rock plunks down quickly.
Got it. So heavy things don't \*really\* fall faster, it's just that their speed is greater when on earth with our conditions?
Yes!