SS Connection

There is a fight going on between physicians to decide whether Galileo or Aristotle methods of free fall is true and to see which one is better to go by. Galileo argued that in the world all bodies fall at the same rate relative to the earth, independent of their mass. Aristotle argued that heavier bodies fall faster. Philoponus challenged Aristotle when he argued that light and heavy weights fall about equally fast in air. There is more problems that deals with net force and gravity in both arguments. Galileo and Aristotle are right part of the times but they both have there faults on there methods. They are wrong other times because the lightest body falling fastest when two bodies fall toward the earth. The results of my free fall experiment depend on whether falling masses originate on earth, the weight of the object, the net force, and gravity. When a single falling bodies starts from the earth, all bodies light and heavy fall at the same rate relative to the earth in agreement with Galileo's view. Lets see which philosopher can get the upper hand and who will come out on top.

Galileo made the same observation as Philosophic. He argued that the slight difference in time could be the resistance offered by the net force to the motion of the falling body. In my experiment, the feathers do fall more slowly than penny or rock. Galileo then made the conclusion that in a net force of resistance, all bodies will fall at the same speed. The conclusion neglected the different aspects of falling objects in the tube and to Galileo it was a significant step toward to better understanding of the motion of bodies and free fall. Galileo used experiments with an inclined plane to promote his view that heavy and light bodies fall equally fast. However to show that Aristotle's hypothesis is not really correct, he felt it necessary to present a rhetorical argument. Galileo presents this argument not only to show the faults of Aristotle's logic, but also the body cannot fall both more slowly and more quickly than the body, so it must fall at the same speed as. Different test shows that even in vacuum for bodies with an straight origin and dropped then the double body does indeed fall faster. Galileo‘s experiments was also not fully correct. Galileo and Aristotle did not distinguish between free fall relative to the earth and relative to the center-of-mass system. Physicians have a trouble picking ether methods because in some ways they are correct and in others there is faults, so it becomes very difficult for them.

Aristotle reached the following conclusion about falling bodies. Aristotle is correct in many real physical cases and he is right in principle in some idealized cases. Compare bodies of the same shape and size falling in a medium such as air or water, then they do reach terminal velocities related to their weight. Of course the terminal velocity is reached much sooner in the denser medium. If Aristotle did conduct an experiment like mine, he likely did it in a liquid such as water to slow down the falling body to a more easily observable speed than in air. Mine is done with air instead but it is still easy to see the speed and how fast the objects fall. It is difficult to judge whether Aristotle falling body and free fall experiments were correct. In cases where a simple observation could have been notices he was known to lie and not always do the experiment right. He sometimes made weird observations like when he argued for a sphere earth not only because of the perfect shape of a sphere, but also the earth casts a circular shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse. What he forgot was to make the connection between free fall and the inclined plane that let Galileo verify his conclusions.

To conclude this essay, I will have to note that both philosophers are correct in some ways and also incorrect in other ways to but there is really no clear cut winner in this fight over free fall. Both philosopher are very smart men and both have good points but in the end this battle is a tie because the argument can go both ways and it’s also up to the persons point of view. Every physician have there awn opinion and there own choice on which method they will follow by but there is not a clear cut method that is always used. In the end both men have contributed to the history and learning of physics but no one can really prove whether one is correct or the other so that means that this fight will have to end in a draw.