Why do objects fall at the same speed

It's proportional to their masses. So that means the accelerations are exactly equal. In the absence of air friction both heavy and light objects will reach the ground at the same time. Galileo deduced this by devising clever experiments with balls rolling down inclined planes.

The acceleration is independent of mass. Follow-up on this answer. Related Questions. Still Curious? How fast something falls due to gravity is determined by a number known as the "acceleration of gravity", which is 9. Basically this means that in one second, any object 's downward velocity will increase by 9. This is just the way gravity works - it accelerates everything at exactly the same rate. What you may be getting confused by is the fact that the force of gravity is stronger on heavier objects than lighter ones.

Another way of thinking of this is to say that gravity has to pull harder on a heavy object than a light one in order to speed them both up by the same amount. However, in the real world, we have things like air resistance, which is why sometimes heavy things do fall faster.

For example, if you drop a feather and you drop a rock, the rock will land first since the feather is slowed down more by the air. If you did the same thing somewhere where there is no air, the feather and the rock would land at exactly the same time. Although Galileo noticed that different things fall at the same rate, there was really no explanation of why until General Relativity was developed.

If you would like us to try to say something about how that explanation works, we could make an attempt. So the force of gravity pulls harder on heavier objects, and it pulls every object no matter what the mass neglecting air resistance toward the Earth with enough force to have it accelerate 9. But what i don't understand is how this force changes.

Like how does gravity "know" how hard it needs to pull the object to make it go 9. And also, why does Earth have gravity and other objects do not? Let me take your second question first. It's not true that other objects lack gravity. According to Newton's theory of universal gravitation published in absolutely every object exerts a gravitational pull on every other object.

Do lighter objects accelerate faster? Answer 3: In real life, heavier objects sometimesfall faster than light objects , but not because ofgravity. Gravity makes all objects increase their speed atthe same rate, regardless of how big they are. Aivaras Glaesmackers Explainer. Do heavier objects slide faster? Heavier things have a greater gravitational forceAND heavier things have a lower acceleration. It turns outthat these two effects exactly cancel to make falling objects have the same acceleration regardless of mass.

Ifthe car drives faster , the air resistance force getslarger. Palmer Arralde Explainer. Does mass increase with acceleration? Notice how mass and force affect acceleration. Newton's second law. The acceleration of an object increases with increased force,decreases with increased mass , and is in the same directionas the force.

Blasinda Cespedosa Explainer. What forces act on falling objects? The two forces acting on the object areweight due to gravity pulling the object towards earth, anddrag resisting this motion. When the object is firstreleased, drag is small as velocity is low, so the resultant force is down.

This means the object acceleratestowards earth. Winona Granger Pundit. Why does a feather fall slower than a brick? Galileo discovered that objects that are more dense, orhave more mass, fall at a faster rate than less denseobjects, due to this air resistance. A feather and brick dropped together. Air resistance causes the feather to fall more slowly. Estera Gentgen Pundit. How fast does gravity travel? As Jupiter moved between Earth and the quasar, thegravitational bending of Jupiter allowed us to measure the speed of gravity , ruling out an infinite speed and determining that the speed of gravity was between2.

Lakhbir Ottanelli Pundit. Does weight matter for falling objects? If no air resistance is present, the rate of descentdepends only on how far the object has fallen, no matter how heavy the object is.

This means that two objects will reach the ground at the same time if they are dropped simultaneously from the same height. Theodor Colado Pundit. Why do falling objects accelerate? An object accelerates when a force is acting onthe object. The reason why objects accelerate as they fall is because the gravity of earth acts on the object. If you pull the earth away from the object asthe object falls, the distance between the object andthe earth increases. Eridania Zach Pundit.

A brick with a parachute will fall a lot slower than a brick-shaped hunk of neutronium with the same parachute, because the gravitational force is proportional to mass, but air resistance depends only on shape and speed. Terminal velocity occurs when gravitational force and air resistance become equal.

With two differently massed objects of identical shape, the heavier one will have a higher terminal velocity. And, like I said before, there is also bouyancy, which plays a noticable role in objects of very different densities. A 1 foot sphere of lead will fall through a vacuum with exactly the same acceleration as a 1 foot helium balloon, but the result is rather different in the atmosphere!

In the "perfect physics world" with no air resistance, objects regardless of mass or size will fall at the same rate under gravitional pressure. But as Ali Algebra have paper and cardboard with the same surface area, obviously air resistance have a part in it. Paper is not heavy enough to go go straight down, it would "fly". Therefore, the outcome with air resistance will be different. It is just that heavier objects are less affected than lighter objects. So if i dropped the sun from a height of say Excluding air resistance.

You'd have to take into account the acceleration of the earth towards the sun aswell as the sun towards the earth I think The piece of paper mentioned in Ali Algebra's experiment seemed to fall at a lesser speed than the cardboard because it reached it's state of equilibrium faster. It is was accelerating at the same rate, however, it stopped accelerating sooner because the net force equaled zero, and the air molecules that were causing resistance equaled the amount of mass in the paper sooner than in the cardboard.

If his experiment was in a vacuum, they would have fallen at the same rate, but the experiment he used to justify his theory was not in a vacuum. I hope I explained this well enough, but I just finished physics and did not commit all of it to memory. Thank goodness for notebooks. You need to be a member in order to leave a comment. Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Already have an account? Sign in here. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings , otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. DO objects fall at the same speed? Share More sharing options Followers 4. Recommended Posts. Ali Algebra Posted December 31, Posted December 31, Now shes just my bitch I dropped a piece of paper, and a piece of cardboard with similar SA. In other words, heavier objects are not as affected by air resistance.

Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options Replies 91 Created 15 yr Last Reply 7 yr. Top Posters In This Topic 8 7 8 8. Popular Posts Ali Algebra December 31, Ali Algebra December 31, Klaynos Posted December 31, Sisyphus Posted December 31, MattC Posted December 31, You can argue against it as much as you want but you're wrong.

Kyle Posted December 31, That of course wouldn't make sense.