Originally posted by whgates3
galileo did his initial experiments rolling balls on inclined planes (slower accelerations were easier to time).
And he did it knowing that his tests wouldn't give a really accurate idea of what happens on vacuum, and that all he was going to get was an aproximation, at its best. Galileo wasn't exactly a pisspoor scientific, you know.
And about the rolling ball thing...
First of all: Rolling balls spend a good ammount of its energy on their rotation, rotation caused by the graze between the ball and the inclined plane. In other words, a ball rolling down a plane is losing energy in its rotation. Galileo laws (as he spelled them) aren't apliable here either.
Second of all: The ball rolled because the graze between the ball and the plane, graze that itself causes an external force opposed to the movement of the ball, and graze that means that Galileo laws aren't,again, appliable because of the presence of an external force.
Galileo did APROXIMATIONS on his laboratory tests and deduced from his tests that in vacuum, everything fell at the same rate.
If you still think that everything falls the same way in the atmosphere, check what I said. Get a 2x2cm box made of paper and throw it thru the window. Get a 2x2cm box, same shape, of iron, and throw it thru the window.
They fall the same way?.
There you go.
