Imagine 2 objects, 1 is a 50kg dumbbell and 1 is a 1g feather, how is it possible that they will fall and touch the ground at the same speed and time assuming they are dropped from the same height?
I must be understanding this completely wrong.
Edit: I definitely understood it completely wrong because I did not know it only applied to objects in space. That makes much more sense.
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To say that it only applies to objects in space (or more generally in a vacuum) is a bit of an exaggeration. Yes, air resistance is an important factor on Earth and not in space. But a feather is an extreme example of an object that has a very large cross section and low mass, and so it is greatly affected by air resistance. For many other pairs of objects, you’ll find that they do fall in almost exactly the same time when dropped from the same height, even on Earth, because there is almost no difference in air resistance. Take two coins of different weights, for instance, or take your 50-kg dumbbell and a 10-kg one, or a sofa and a table, or a tennis ball and a marble. If you drop them from a few meters, the difference in fall time will be negligible. It’s mainly when you consider very light objects (esp. things that have low density, i.e. are light relative to their size, and present a large cross section when falling) that you see any difference, but other than that, in many real-life situations you’ll find that you often can’t really tell if one thing falls faster than another.
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