Fact Check - Falling Objects

Kiteretsunu Galileo's law tells us about how all objects falling from the same height reach the bottom at the same time irrespective of the mass. But yet a leaf reaches the bottom much later than a stone when thrown from the same height. Instances like these made people believe that heavier objects always fall more quicker than lighter ones, which is not true. The speed with which an object falls is independent of its mass.

1) STATEMENT - The speed at which an object reaches the ground is independent of its mass.

EXPERIMENT - A ping pong ball and a stone of the same size were thrown from the same height, but the stone reached the ground first, so that means that a heavier object reaches the ground more quicker than an lighter object, so the first statement is false.

FACT - The experiment actually did work according to our intution, we already knew from the beginning that the stone would have reach the ground first. But that doesn't mean the first statement is wrong. It holds true in this case too, though the heavier object reached the ground first in this case, it was not because of the mass than it was because of its average density, "Surface area-Volume" ratio, air resistance and terminal velocity. Air resistance is the frictional force which the air provides to the falling objects and it depends on the speed with which they fall and the shape and size of the objects falling. Now because the ping pong ball has a huge surface area but negligible volume of material inside (it's mostly air) the air resistance is very large for that little ball, whereas a stone is full of material and it's not hollow, so the air resistance is less for its mass and the stone falls first than the ping pong ball. Thus the reason why the stone fell first was not because of the mass than it was because of the complex factors contributing to their air resistances they faced. If a similar experiment was done with a super-sized balloon of mass 500 gramme and a stone of mass 400 gramme, the stone would have reached the ground in this case too.

Comments

Fact Check is back! - PositronWildhawk (1/15/2015)

Nice post bro - flamingsoul (1/15/2015)

... Well over my head, but well written nonetheless! - keycha1n (1/16/2015)

Finally, a second Fact Check is here! - visitor (1/17/2015)

This one is better than the first one! - visitor (5/3/2015)

Could you follow me? - visitor (5/13/2015)

These a pretty cool. - visitor (6/10/2015)

Truly said.There is always difference between real and ideal.In some cases factors affecting like air resistance are not considered.It is neglected.
For example,let the stone and feather fall through a long evacuated tube.In that case two objects will fall almost at same rate. - divphygamer (8/25/2015)