Speed which objects fall

Your initial thoughts would be confirmed. Heavier things do indeed fall faster. Here is the first classic example. This is a bowling ball and a basketball dropped from the same height. Normally, I hold these two balls up in a classroom and ask students which will hit the ground first. I never actually drop them because dropping a bowling ball on the ground from above your head might not be such a great idea.

However, it does get the students excited that I might actually drop them. This year, the students convinced me to actually drop them. We went outside so I could drop them in the grass. Here are two videos that students recorded. There is a bonus experiment afterwards which I will describe bellow.

View Iframe URL. These two objects clearly have different mass but they fall with the same acceleration. I guess I should point out one more thing about falling objects. If you were to measure the position of these balls as they fall, they do not fall with a constant speed. Instead, they fall with a constant acceleration. That is to say that as they fall, the speed increases. For these two objects, they hit the ground at the same time because they both start from rest and both have the same acceleration.

Here is another example that you can try yourself. Take two sheets of plain paper. They have the same mass, right? Now crumple one up into a ball and then drop both. Even though they have the same mass, the crumpled one will hit the ground first. Here is a better example. In this case I have a crumpled up piece of paper and some type of foam board. The paper has a mass of 5 grams and the board is grams. Just as a hint, that's a big difference in mass.

But which one hit the ground first? Yup, the piece of paper. Awesome, right? They both hit the ground at the same time. So, what hits the ground first? Above you can see it all. Understanding these basic facts will help you to be able to answer the question of why some objects fall faster than others.

You can test the rate at which various objects fall, noting both the mass of each object, and how long it takes for it to fall. Be sure to drop all objects from the same height, and be careful to use only objects that can't break. Record all your information in a journal, and chart your results. Manage My Favorites. What is gravity? The sun, the earth, and the moon The larger an object is, the greater is the force of its attraction.

Who was Galileo Galilei? So, why do some objects fall faster than others? A feather and brick dropped together. Air resistance causes the feather to fall more slowly. Excerpted from. This book contains great information for different kinds of science fair projects. Buy the Book. FutureFit IN. Put Galileo's theories to the test with bricks and feathers! What happens if you drop a feather and a coin together?

The feather and the coin have roughly the same surface area, so when they begin to fall they have about the same air resistance. As the feather falls, its air resistance increases until it soon balances the weight of the feather.

The feather now falls at its terminal velocity. However, the coin is much heavier, so it has to travel quite fast before air resistance is large enough to balance its weight. In fact, it probably hits the ground before it reaches its terminal velocity. An astronaut on the Moon carried out a famous experiment. He dropped a hammer and a feather at the same time and found that they landed together.