Does weight affect the speed of the object fallen?

Answer 1

Weight has nothing to do with how fast things fall, only wind resistance. Take two

16 ounce soda bottles, open one drink eight ounces. The unopened bottle is twice

as heavy as the opened bottle. Close the bottle you just drank half of and drop

them at the same time from a tall building, they will hit the ground at the same

time. That is because the acceleration of any falling object is the same, and their

speed when they hit the ground is the same.

Acceleration is the same for all objects at 9.81 meters/second^2 (32.2 feet/second^2, or

22 mph per second). Thus, ignoring air resistance an object starting from rest will

attain a speed of 9.81 m/s after one second, 19.62 m/s after two seconds, and so

on. If you are wondering why a hammer hit the ground before a feather, look at

it's aerodynamic qualities, it has nothing to do with its weight.

Answer 2

Dear Wiki Questioner,

The weight of an object does not affect its speed as it falls towards the earth.

To prove this we start with Newton's Law of Gravitation, which states:

F=G(me x m / d^2)

Where 'F' is the gravitational force between the earth and a falling object

'G' is the gravitational constant

'me' is the mass of the Earth

'm' is the mass of the falling object

and 'd' is the distance between the center of the earth and the falling object

Next we combine Newton's Law of Gravitation with Newton's Second Law of Motion which states:

F=ma

Where 'F' is a force acting on an object (in our case, the force of gravity on our object)

'm' is the mass of our object

and 'a' is the acceleration of our object due to the force F applied to it

When we combine these two equations we get:

F=ma=G(me x m / d^2)

And we can divide both sides by the mass of our object to get:

a=G(me/d^2)

You can see that since the mass of our falling object cancels out of the final equation, its downward acceleration does not depend on its mass. Since speed is dependent on the acceleration and weight is dependent on the mass of our object, we can conclude that the weight of our falling object DOES NOT affect the speed at which it falls!

To see this concept in action, you can visit the following web page to view a video of a feather (with low mass) and a metal ball (with more mass) being dropped in a vacuum (so that there is no air resistance), and witness that they both hit the ground at the same time. [Note: the first drop is not in a vacuum, to see the vacuum drop, wait until 17 seconds into the video]

http://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=_XJcZ-KoL9o