yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Misconceptions About Falling Objects


2m read
·Nov 10, 2024

Now I want you to make a prediction: in my left hand I have a standard size basketball, and in my right hand a 5 kg medicine ball. If I drop them both at exactly the same time, which one will hit the ground first?

Ah, this is a trick one, isn't it? The heavy will go down first.

Well, yeah, it'll drop faster. They'll both hit the ground at the same time. Give me a PR. Actually, I would have thought this one would go faster, 'cause it's heavier.

Heavier? Maybe it's that one.

Maybe this one? Yeah, so you reckon that this one will be faster?

So why does that make it faster?

H: 'Cause the weight pulls it down quicker.

What are we measuring when we say, "Oh, it's heavier?"

Gravity.

Gravity, go ahead.

Yeah, oh, objects being pulled to the earth, I guess.

Okay, so which of these objects is being more pulled to the Earth?

This one.

That one? The black one?

All right, well here's what we're going to do. I want you to hold both of those above your head, get really high. Can you? On the count three. Ready?

3, 2, 1...

Yeah, exactly the same. They fell at the same time. Exactly the same time they hit.

It the same time was that what you expected to see?

No.

So what do you make of that?

I need to go read more books. Magic.

Gravity is going to pull it at the same rate no matter how heavy or how light it is.

But gravity is how light or how heavy something is?

One, be massive. There must be some force that's dragging down, and actually, the actual weight of it doesn't mean it doesn’t matter.

Something to do with mass or something? I can't remember. Why?

It's almost like the weight holds it back in a way, even though that doesn't seem to make sense.

I think you might be hitting on an interesting point there. Weight holds it back.

Now it's not actually weight that holds it back, but inertia. That's the tendency of matter to maintain its state of motion. So to remain at rest if stationary, or to continue with constant velocity when in motion.

What's the big idea?

The big idea is this: one has more mass, so it's got more weight, which you can clearly feel, but it's also got more inertia, which means it's also more sluggish, right? It tends to resist acceleration.

So that greater force is required to accelerate it at the same rate as this ball.

Like a heavy car trying to accelerate?

Like a heavy car trying to accelerate, you need more force to get it going.

Exactly. So what does all that mean?

Well, the force on the medicine ball is greater than the force on the basketball, but it has more inertia.

And what's really important is that the ratio of force to inertia is the same for all objects, so everything accelerates at the same rate and lands at the same time.

And the plastic block because it's conducting the heat to the ice cube now. Point.

Growing up, most of us have been captivated by one of these: a slinky.

So why doesn't the space station come crashing into the Earth?

More Articles

View All
Finding mistakes in one-step equations | 6th grade | Khan Academy
We’re told that Lisa tried to solve an equation: see, 42 is equal to 6a, or 6 times a. Then we can see her steps here, and they say where did Lisa make her first mistake. So pause this video and see if you can figure that out. It might be possible she mad…
Astronaut Mike Massimino Talks with Kids | One Strange Rock
So how do you go Ah ha! How do you think? What happened? You’re rubbing your head. Oh, no. Right here is just aching. It is? Yeah, I don’t know why. Is it the conversation? Like my brain is just so excited. Your brain is so excited? Yeah. I’ve ne…
Probability of sample proportions example | Sampling distributions | AP Statistics | Khan Academy
We’re told suppose that 15% of the 1750 students at a school have experienced extreme levels of stress during the past month. A high school newspaper doesn’t know this figure, but they are curious what it is. So they decide to ask us a simple random sampl…
Still Human | Nobel Peace Prize Shorts
[Music] Don’t you talk about it. [Music] Ahem, of Kundalini. Yeah, near question item cool. Alexander returneth to cool. Remove a new drama for their which my basket. Could you rather lag in the belief that it would man build over be our mother the way an…
Kieran Snyder of Textio at the Seattle Female Founders Conference
To our next speaker, Sharon Schneider, who is the founder and CEO of Textio. Oh, so I actually started hearing about Textio last year from a number of YC alumni who used and loved Textio. They use Textio to analyze their job postings. So, Textio is used …
Howard Marks on Investing in a Low Interest Rate Environment
How are return high returns achieved? High risk-adjusted returns, how do you get high returns with low risk? The answer, in my experience, is investors make money most safely and most easily when they do things that other people are unwilling to do. What…