How do 2 objects of different weights fall and touch the ground at the same speed and time?

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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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Anonymous 0 Comments

I think a good way to reason about it is by thinking about what you consider an object. If you have two rocks and drop them next to each other they should fall at the same speed. If you tape a string to both of them so they’re connected, are the two rocks just one big heavier object now that should fall faster? What happens if you glue them together? The only reasonable conclusion is that gravity doesn’t care how much mass there is and everything takes the same amount of time to reach the ground. Unfortunately there is air everywhere that slows things down that move through it. That’s why a feather falls a lot slower than a rock. There is a lot more air that’s in the way compared to how heavy it is. That’s also why a crumpled up piece of paper usually reaches the ground faster than a sheet

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