• ryannathans@aussie.zone
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    14 hours ago

    Except if you could measure exactly the speed of objects falling in a vacuum, the heavier object would appear to fall faster due to the gravitational pull on the Earth. You’re forgetting the Earth falls toward the object too.

    • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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      23 hours ago

      No, mass or weight of an object is irrelevant, in one of the jurney to the Moon, astronauts demostrate it with an hammer and a feather on the moon that both fellt at the same speed. It exist one gravity aceleration, on earth is 9,82 ms², which is the force of acceleration which experiment any object on Earth, the only difference which can slow it down is the resistant of air, this can be different in each object, but without atmosphere there is nothing which slow down the acceleration of the object, it’s irrelevant the material, weight, mass or form. Basic physic

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo8TaPVsn9Y

      • ryannathans@aussie.zone
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        14 hours ago

        The difference is far too small to measure at these scales, the Earth would be falling toward the more massive object faster than the less massive object. Therefore the more massive object hits first.

        • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
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          3 hours ago

          Therefore the more massive object hits first.

          Only technically. The effect you’re describing is so minute that it’s insignificant.

          It’s like pointing out that the Great Pyramids of Giza are so massive that time moves 1 billionth slower for the surrounding objects. It’s neat that the effect is potentially measurable, but noone is going to be adjusting their clocks to account for it

          • ryannathans@aussie.zone
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            16 minutes ago

            Science is built on technicalities. In an exam, if a student considered the centre of m_1 as the centre of gravity instead of the weighed centre of m_1 and m_2 they would fail. This is no different

      • heatofignition@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        R^2 is on the bottom. We don’t ignore the mass of one object because it’s insignificant, that would make the top of that equation 0 and the object wouldn’t fall at all.

        That nifty gravitational law gives you the force of gravity on an object, not the acceleration. Force also equals mass times the resultant acceleration, right? So Fg1 = m1*A1 = G*M*m1/r^2 and Fg2 = m2*A2 = G*M*m2/r^2. m1 and m2 are present on both sides of those equations, respectively, so they cancel, and you get A1 = G*M/r^2 and A2 = G*M/r^2, which are identical. The mass of an object affects the force of gravity, but when you look at acceleration the mass terms cancel out.