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He basically said that heavier things fall faster.

This is not true. Here's a reductio ad absurdum argument to show that it can't be true.

Suppose that it IS true. Now drop a 10 pound cannonball and a 20 pound cannonball from the same height. Obviously, the 20 pound cannonball hits the ground first. (Remember, we're assuming Aristotle was right.)

Now let's take a string and connect the two cannonballs. The twenty-pound cannonball will fall faster than the ten-pound cannonball ... until they pull the string taut. Now what happens? Does the heavy ball speed the light one up, or does the light ball slow the heavy one down? Do they fall at the average speed of the two? And how do the cannonballs know they're tied together so they know how to fall?

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12y ago

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