Concept of Free Fall

In fourth century BC, the philosopher Aristotle proposed that heavier object fall faster than
lighter one. Aristotle’s theory was not questioned for thousand years until scholars from
Medieval Europe in the 14th century defined the relationships among time, distance, and
velocity under uniform acceleration.

Two centuries after the scholars from Medieval Europe defined acceleration, Galileo
completed the work by describing the accelerated movement of falling objects. Galileo
discovered that the objects fell with the same acceleration and proving that the speed of a
falling body is independent of its weight. In the other words, heavy objects and light objects
would fall at the same rate. 

The link between this theory and the physical world would be established in many years later
by Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Newton developed on the work of Galileo to better
explanation about the relationship between gravity and motion. In Newtonian physics, free
fall describes the motion of a body when the only force acting upon it is gravity. Free fall
happens with constant acceleration, because the acceleration due to gravity is always constant
and downward.

The best way to see the basic features of motion involving gravity is to start by considering
the motion with no air resistance or friction. Under these vacuum circumstances, the object is
in free-fall. The motion of free-fall for a body near to the Earth is one-dimensional and has
constant acceleration defined as g, approximately 10m/s2. The initial velocity is zero. The
magnitude of velocity increases as the object falls to the earth and it will continue to
accelerate until it hit the ground.

Fortunately, for skydivers they do experience resistance from the air when they fall. Because
of that resistance, when skydivers falling within Earth's atmosphere, they will reach a
terminal velocity. The thing that makes terminal velocity reachable is air resistance. This is
because as the velocity increases, the resistance from the air increases until the force of
gravity acting on skydiver body is equal to the resistance from the air. When the pull of
gravity is equal to the resistance of the air, the skydiver can go no faster and have reached
terminal velocity. 

This phenomena shows an object that is falling through the atmosphere is subjected to two
external forces. The first force is the gravitational force, expressed as the weight of the object,
and the second force is the aerodynamic drag of the object. In contrast, when an object falls
through a vacuum or nor air resistance condition, there was only one external force, the
gravitational force. It expressed as the weight of the object. An object that is moving only
because of the action of gravity is consider to be free falling.

For deeper understanding about the motion of bodies with constant weight falling with and
without air resistance, let’s drop a feather and a coin together. The feather and the coin are
being pulled downward due to the force of gravity. Both coin and feather begin to accelerate.

When a feather falls, air resistance increases until it soon balances the weight of the feather.
The feather now falls at its terminal velocity. However, since the coin has more mass, it
weighs more and experiences a greater downward force of gravity. The coin needs to
accelerate for a longer period of time before there is sufficient upward air resistance to
balance the large downward force of gravity. In fact, the coin falls faster than the feather
because it never reaches a terminal velocity.
What if the feather and coin fall with no air resistance? For example, if conducting the
experiment in a vacuum condition. When air resistance is eliminated, neither the coin nor the
feather would experience any air drag during the course of their fall. You will surprise by the
fact that in the absence of air resistance, the coin and the feather strike the ground at the same
time. The reason can be explained with the Newton’s second law. Imagine the coin has mass
30 times more than the feather. This means that gravity pulls 30 times as hard on the coin than
on the feather. The both coin and feather fall with the same acceleration.

References:

Kavanagh, C., & Sneider, C. (2007). Learning about gravity I. Free fall: A guide for teachers
and curriculum developers. Astronomy Education Review, 5(2), 21-52.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (2015). Motion of Free Falling Object (no
air resistance). Retrieved Febuary 25, 2021 from https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-
12/airplane/mofall.html

National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (2015). Motion of Free Falling Object (with
air resistance). Retrieved Febuary 25, 2021 from https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-
12/airplane/falling.html

The Physics Classroom. (2021). Elephant and Feather - Air Resistance. Retrieved Febuary
25, 2021 from https://www.physicsclassroom.com/mmedia/newtlaws/efar.cfm

The Physics Classroom. (2021). Elephant and Feather - Free Fall. Retrieved Febuary 25, 2021
from https://www.physicsclassroom.com/mmedia/newtlaws/efff.cfm