Transcript The Development and Impact of The Law of Falling Bodies

The Development and Impact of The
Law of Falling Bodies
Xu Yan
Weimo Xu
Taoran Xue
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Among the 100 Greatest Discoveries chosen by the Science
Channel’s, The Law of Falling Bodies set down by the wellknown physicist Galileo Galilei stands on the top of the list.
This noble discovery outweighs the other ones not only on the
impact upon society but also on the hardship and disregard
the discovery met during the process.
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Before the discovery, the whole society
held the generally accepted belief raised by
Aristotle, the most powerful authority at the
time in 1600s, that how a body falls
depends on its weight and heavy objects
fall faster than lighter ones. Aristotle held
the opinion that All objects under the moon
desired to be in their natural place. He
stated that Lighter objects tend to have less
'earth,' which attract less gravity than the
heavier objects which attract more
gravity (White), and that’s why a one
handred pound ball should definitely fall
faster than a one pound ball. However,
Galileo looked deeply inside and found that
Aristotle’s assumption were inconsistant
with the real world.
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According to Galileo, in the same vacuum,
all objects with unequal weights would fall
with the exactly same speed. He also pointed
out that the motion of an object would
remain unchanged unless an external force
acted on it. Galileo’s assumption was
contradicted to Aristotle’s idea and to what
we saw in our daily life.
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In Galileo’s theory, it is the air resistance
and friction that causes heavy rocks fall
faster than light rocks. However, no one
listened to Galileo. As we all knew, Galileo
then did a famous experiment. He dropped
two balls, which were different in mass,
from the leaning tower of Pisa. Then, as
what he predicted, the two balls with
different mass hit the ground at the same
time. Unfortunately, the experiment is not
proven to be a real one. Instead, most
physicists and scientists consider it as a
mental experiment which has never been
conducted in the real world because there is
no accurate description and records about
this experiment in the history.
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In addition, many scientists claimed that this
experiment required very accurate measurements
of mass, time, length, which appeared to be
impossible with the technology of 1600.(Roben)
However, Galileo finally won the tug of war. His
theory of the Falling bodies is proven by many
famous and prominent scientists such as Newton.
He accepted Galileo’s theory and used it in his
own discovery of Gravitation. Galileo’s law of
falling bodies built a foundation for further
development in physics. In addition, Galileo’s
experiences and instances gave many other
scientists a lesson and inspired them to explore
the world with an open mind.
References
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Rubin, Julian. "Galileo Galilei. The Falling Bodies
Experiment."
Following the Paths of Discovery. November
2009. Web. 10 Feb. 2011.
<http://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/galileofalling
bodies.html >.
White, Michael. "Gravity: From Cave-men To
Newton." science20. N.p., 3 Feb.
2010. Web. 10 Feb. 2011.
<http://www.science20.com/adaptive_complexity
/gravity_cavemen_newton>.