how is it that heavier objects don’t fall faster (e.g. Pisa experiment) , but heavier people go faster downhill on skis or sleds than less heavy people

Question

Edit: thanks all for your examples!

In: 3

Answer 1

In a world with no air, all objects will fall with increasing velocity, same acceleration.

Different objects have different terminal velocity depending on their “weight”. Thus a feather falls slowly, and a rock falls fast.

For other cases, the explanation is a bit more complicated. For example, on an incline, a ‘sliding block’ will accelerate faster than a ‘rolling ball’ because extra effort is required to overcome rolling inertia in the latter case.

For real world friction coefficients, they do slightly depend on the weight and its distribution, so two unequal mass objects will slide differently because the friction is not ‘ideal’ Coulomb’s friction.