Ball & Feather Drop in a Vacuum

Watch as a ball and feather drop in a vacuum. Watch and see which lands first!

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Category:

Education

Tags:

• ball
• feather
• drop
• vacuum
• Galileo
• physics
• demo
• experiment

[jonsastar]

why did the feather bounce

[SMUPhysics]

I'm not so sure it bounced more than it just shifted a bit on impact. Remember, with no air in the tube, the feather falls much more quickly than it would outside the tube. It can't be expected for the feather to land "softly" in a vacuum.

[ManniMann1986]

@funkleman

youtube.com/watch?v=_XJcZ-KoL9­o

just watch that, and you'll see i'm right :)

[TheDataMonkey]

@TheDataMonkey Whoops. Replace 'oxygen' with 'air'.

[TheDataMonkey]

@funkleman Most objects entering the atmosphere would *not* burn up on re-entry. The heat generated on the space shuttle and other incoming objects is caused entirely by the speed of the object. It's actually the oxygen around the shuttle heating up and turning to plasma from friction, not the shuttle itself heating up. An object that just fell slowly into the atmosphere wouldn't burn up; it'd accelerate at the rate of gravity until it reached terminal velocity due to air resistance.

[vinoo202]

Cancelling ‘m’ on both sides of the equation.

We get

a = G x M / R^2

Substituting these for the actual values, gives a result of 9.8 m/s^2

'm' does not figure in this equation.

Hence, all freefalling objects, whether a piano or dime experience the same acceleration on Earth, Vacuum is just to eliminate air resistance.

**End of post**

[vinoo202]

Consider an object of mass 'm' falling towards Planet earth in a vaccum chamber.

Where,

G = Universal Gravitational Constant

M = Mass of Earth

m = Mass of dropped object

R = Distance between the centre of Earth and the centre of ‘m’

F = Force of attraction between the Earth and ‘m’

According to Newton's law of Gravitation

F = ( G x M x m ) / R^2

....continued.

[funkleman]

@ManniMann1986 also a smaller object will burn up do to friction before a large object will in the earths atmosphere do to atmospheric friction.

[funkleman]

@ManniMann1986 the problem with all these experiments is thier using obects of the same size wich fall at the same rate of speed and not using objects heavier than a person can carry. if you had a dime in one hand and were thrust a grand piano, would you think both are accelerating at the same rate of speed to the ground? common sense. wich is faster a toy rocket or the space shuttle, wich is bigger if size doesnt matter and everything accelerates at the same rate of speed.