Recent content by PatrickR

Haha ... yes - thanks - that was a typo ... honest ... I've been there :)

So in essence the experiment with the balls in the living room I have described here, is the same as Galileo's where he threw objects off of The Tower of Pizza ... is that correct?

Hmmm ... nothing in this world is simple. OK but if we think about Galileo's experiment, which seems to be the seed upon which modern thinking on gravity has grown from, that would not have been different in essence from what we are discussing here with the living room experiment ... right?

Hmmm ... ok ... the rush (acceleration) to terminal velocity would be different due to the difference in mass ... I get that ... but from that point on they would be falling at exactly the same speed and therefore hit the ground very close together ... in this example anyway. If we had a 100 ton...

Ha ... I knew there would be some kind of tricky caveat to this ... let me think about that :)

Hmmm ... see now you've foxed me. Why would the air resistance be different if both balls were exactly the same shape/volume/surface area?

Haha ... brilliant... thanks. It just seems so counter intuitive but if you can do it right in your own home there's no argument.

Hi ... air resistance is the reason that objects of different mass fall to Earth at different speeds. In a vacuum all objects fall to Earth at the same rate regardless of mass. OK - I get it but all the experiments that illustrate this tend to rely on tall buildings or massive vacuum chambers...