Friday, October 4, 2013

Gravity

In antiquity Aristotle had taught that a heavy weight falls faster than a light one. In 1638, without any experimentation, Galileo saw that this could not be true. What had he realized?
Source: Futility Closet

1 comment:

Taposik said...

He imagined connecting a heavy weight to a light one and dropping them together. Now Aristotle’s theory makes two contradictory predictions:

1) The heavy weight should fall more slowly than normal, since the light weight now hinders it.

2) The heavy weight should fall more quickly than normal, since the two connected weights now form one very heavy object.

These can’t both be true, so Aristotle can’t be right. Instead the two weights must fall at the same rate.