Re: an interesting letter

[gastineau@badgerden.com (John E. Gastineau)]

On 30 May 97 at 9:43, Joseph Bellina wrote:

> I may be wrong, but I think this person in a real Aristotlean.  If I
> read him correctly he is wondering what the heavier object falls the
> same way as the lighter object.  Or have I missread him?  

He claims that his "slowfall" experiments show that the heavier 
object DOES fall faster, and that this is only natural since the 
heavier object has more of an interaction with the earth in the pan 
scale experiment. 

The fun of using this letter in class is that everyone goes along
with the "interaction" bit and agrees that yes, the heavy cube does
more of _something_ (gravitational interaction) with the earth, so
why doesn't it accelerate at a greater rate? It must! This guy must
be on to something! What they don't realize at first is that that
heavier object is harder to accelerate. (F=ma and all that...) 

Now you can talk about inertial and gravitational mass, etc. 

JEG


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