On the moon, which hammer or feather will hit the ground first?

There are questions that humanity has always asked itself. One of them is as old as the world, about physics, and especially about the way objects fall.

Gravity, weight, speed: For centuries, our ancestors were on the wrong track. Until Galileo’s intervention, a few centuries later, a small experiment on the moon finally proved him right.

In ancient times, Aristotle put forward a theory that has long been unanimous: an iron ball falls. 100 times faster than another ball is 100 times lighter. In other words, if two objects are released simultaneously, the heavier one will move downward faster than the lighter one.

So a stone has more gravitational force than a feather, for example (you have to weigh them to feel the difference) so if they are released simultaneously they will hit the ground first. If Galileo had not shown that all this was a lie we would have stopped here.

As he climbed to the top of the Tower of Pisa in Italy, the physicist released two balls, as described by Aristotle, and surprisingly, both balls came to the ground almost simultaneously.

For Italians, there is no doubt: gravity acts equally on all objects, regardless of their weight. This was not until 1971 Apollo 15 lunar mission Prove it bluntly.

At that time, Commander David Scott, who was trampling on the lunar soil at the time, landed on an experiment that Galileo and Aristotle had no doubt dreamed of: he took a 1.32kg hammer and a feather weighing 0.03kg and dropped them in the same place. Time.

Conclusion: The feather and the hammer hit the ground simultaneously. Why? Because as Galileo thought, the force of gravity acts equally on all bodies, and the regression that can occur on Earth in the fall of objects is actually due to the simple resistance of the wind.

Indifferently

Of course, the gravitational pull on the moon is different. But the problem is not there, Wired explains. The real difference between launching an object on our satellite and Earth lies in the presence or absence of the atmosphere. Presence or absence of air.

When a body falls, the force of gravity pulls it down, while the wind pushes the object upwards against its motion – a force called “pull”. In the presence of air as well as on the ground, change can occur when two objects hit the ground.

In the absence of air, on the other hand, like the moon, heavy and light objects touch the surface at the same time. This is what Galileo said. Gravity acts equally on all bodies, and they fall at the same speed, regardless of their mass or the material from which they are made. That’s an eventEquality policy“.

A little experiment proposed by Wire and what you can do at home may have shown Aristotle that he was on the wrong track, he declared that heavy objects always hit the ground before the lighter ones.

Take two small pieces of paper. Crush one into balls and leave the other intact and drop them at the same time. Two objects that are said to have the same mass and the same force of gravity do not hit the ground at the same time: Aristotle would not have had paper in hand.