Tower of Pisa: An Experiment with Galen Weitkamp

Galen Weitkamp, professor of mathematics at Western Illinois University, explains Galileo's famous experiment and poses questions to consider, including:

- Does the relative acceleration of a stone falling toward the Earth's surface really depend on whether the stone is of extraterrestrial origin or not? Can you state precisely what's going on here?

- Will two falling bodies that are side by side at a given moment in time and have the same velocity at the time reach the Earth's surface simultaneously? What if both are terrestrial? What if both are extraterrestrial?

- What if one's terrestrial and the other not? What happens if the bodies are tethered together?

- What does Einstein's General Theory of Relativity predict about the relative acceleration of falling stones?

Visit the WIU Department of Mathematics at http://www.wiu.edu/cas/math/

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[Mend-Amar Dashdendev]

Wow, how cool. Like it :)