this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
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Lucretius, writing in 50 BCE:
I was literally just writing about him nailing survival of the fittest too.
He's still arguing that heavy objects would fall faster when dropped anywhere on Earth, though, specifically bringing up air resistance as the reason. His argument is that they would fall at the same rate in a vacuum.
But that's true, isn't it? Putting aside volume and shape.
He's close, but not quite there. Air resistance slows things, and in a vacuum all things will fall at the same rate, yes. But, weight has zero impact on the rate an object falls through the atmosphere. Air resistance affects things based on their shape and permeability. He's still saying that a heavier object will fall faster in atmosphere, all other things being equal, which is false.
He clearly knows air resistance is a thing, he just doesn't understand how it works.
Hi. Physicist here. You are absolutely wrong. The mass of an object does not affect the magnitude of force of air resistance which acts upon a falling object. But the acceleration that object will have is given by Newton's second law as Force divided by mass. So a heavy and a light ball with the same shape will experience the same air resistance, but the heavy ball will "care less" and thus fall faster.
But it does affect the downward force acting on the object. Given two objects of the same shape but with different masses, one will indeed fall slower than the other. This is because the ratio of weight to surface area differs a lot between the two. Here's a calculator from NASA you can play with, and a relevant passage from the same page:
https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/beginners-guide-to-aeronautics/termvel/
A ping-pong ball sized lead shot and a ping-pong ball both fall at the same rate though air?
That doesn't sound right.
That's because there's more than just weight that's different there
Don't leave dry sarcasm on the Internet without the requisite sarcasm mark, lol, I ain't gonna bitch out and add it now tho
Size and shape are the same. Mass is different. What else?
If all things are equal except for mass. Then the object of higher mass will fall faster.
I don't think he's talking about air resistance but about density, which is pretty close to the notion of weight and also affect fall speed. He probably came to this conclusion by looking at how things fall (or not) through water.