Science Trivia #5: Gravity accelerates objects at the same rate; dropping a bowling ball and a feather experiment.

You might think that I am asking a non-sense question and that the clear answer to my question is the bowling ball since it is heavier. I totally get where you are coming from and you totally make sense. But do you know that if you drop these objects in a vacuum at the same height and at the same time, both objects will reach the ground at the same time?

In a normal environment that we are in, we have Gravity and we have Air Resistance. We all know gravity. We know that gravity is what keep us on the ground and keeps us falling however with gravity, it pulls all objects to the ground at the same rate. This means that even if the bowling ball is heavier than the feather, they both fall at the same acceleration due to gravity at speed 9.8 m/s².

So why do both objects fall at different times here in our normal environment despite having the same acceleration with gravity? This is because of air resistance. Air resistance is also called as drag, this force acts opposite to the direction of the moving object and slowing that object down. You can think of air resistance as gravity in the air. Since feather is more bouyant than the bowling ball, it doesn’t have so much force to break into air resistance slowing it down and making it float in the air unlike the bowling ball. Bouyancy is the ability of a material to stay afloat or rise in a liquid or gas. This is the reason why in our normal environment, the bowling ball reaches the ground first. But what happens in a vacuum?

A vacuum is a space devoid of matter, this means that there is no air resistance present inside a vacuum. However gravity is still present. So in this kind of environment, if you drop the bowling ball and the feather at the same height and at the same time, they will have the same acceleration due to gravity and there won’t be a force such as air resistance or drag that can slow down the two objects. This will result for the objects reaching the ground at the same time.

Actually Brian Cox, a famous scientist tried this experiment by visiting the world’s biggest vacuum chamber to witness the difference of dropping a bowling ball and a feather in a normal environment with the presence of air resistance and in a vacuum which has no air resistance. You can click on the video and watch it, and you can also go Here