Famous experiments you should know: Part 1

Galileo’s ‘Falling Bodies’ principle.

Galileo Galilei — astronomer, physicist, engineer, not a big fan of the Church

Here’s a quick exercise before we begin.

If you drop a feather and a bowling ball from the fifth floor of a building; which object do you think would reach the ground first?

In case you are having difficulty imagining a bowling ball next to a feather

The bowling ball will reach first, obviously. We know this from common sense and common observation. Why did this happen though? well because the bowling ball was heavier. This seems to be the only plausible reason.

But Galileo would not agree with you, not because he has seen a bowling ball the first time in his life but because theoretically, you are wrong.

He would probably be in your face shouting and arguing and you won’t get any or most of what he is saying because, well, he would be speaking Italian.

Galileo was known to be short-tempered and a serial pointer-of-fingers

Let’s walk away from Galileo for a moment and imagine a second scenario, one where we drop a refrigerator and a washing machine from the same fifth floor. Which one do you think will reach the ground first?

Now that takes processing, doesn’t it? You may think that the heavier of the two will reach first because in the earlier experiment we assumed that the bowling ball fell faster than the feather because of its weight. That, again, seems to be the only plausible explanation.

This is where Galileo would condescendingly grin and start explaining his principle of falling bodies and how you are wrong but you won’t understand this either because, again, he would speak in Italian.

So here’s a rough, censored, translation: “Shape, size, and mass have no effect on a freely falling object. It is the wind and other external conditions that make objects fall faster or slower, stupido. Every object falls at the same speed. No exceptions.”

This basically means that the reason our feather fell slower than the bowling ball was because of air. The aerodynamic structure, the thin closely places barbs on the feather, its lightweight allows the air to build up resistance causing the feather to sway and also resist the earth’s gravitational pull.

Make do

And because of this, the feather does not accelerate towards the earth like the bowling ball. The feather is experiencing something called Terminal Velocity (more on this later) where the air resistance balances the earth’s gravitational pull and does not let the feather accelerate towards the earth.

According to Galileo, if the feather and the bowling ball were dropped in a vacuum (a place with no air resistance and other external factors), both would accelerate at the same pace and reach the ground simultaneously. This is Galileo’s Falling Bodies Principle.

The same principle applies to our ill-fated refrigerator and washing machine. Under normal conditions, both objects are heavy enough to negate any air resistance and fall, more or less, at the same speed and reach their final resting place together. Their aerodynamic capabilities are very near to zero which leaves no scope for resisting gravity and really assures a big thud at the end.

If this experiment was performed in a vacuum, both the refrigerator and the washing machine would reach the ground at the exact same moment.

This principle was proven again by our dear friend and agony-inducer Isaac Newton in his laws of Motion.

So, there it is — Galileo’s Falling Bodies Principle that has stood the test of time and refused to go down.