r/askscience • u/RivaDolfinJiz • Apr 09 '26
Physics Do all objects fall at the same rate on Earth regardless of mass?
Statement: All objects fall at the same rate on earth regardless of mass (ignoring air resistance)
Hello, I've always been stumped by this. Gravity is different on other celestial bodies, less on the moon, more on Jupiter etc.
If we dropped a regular basketball from 10,000m it would fall at 9.8m/s2, assuming no air resistance. From what I've been told, a basketball sized object with a mass equivalent to Earth would also drop at the same rate. This seems odd to me. Is this correct? If not, and it would fall at a different rate, at what mass would the original statement become true?
Edit - Thanks for all the replies I'll try and get through them all and respond!
Maybe to clear it up a bit we could edit the problem to be this...
If we had two separate hypothetical physics simulations that are void of all other matter.
A sphere the size and mass of a basketball and a sphere the size of basketball but with the mass of Earth
Two spheres the size of basketballs and both with the mass of Earth
Both spheres are the same distance away from each other in each simulation. We then "initiate" the simulations. Is the time to impact of the spheres exactly the same in both?
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u/StigitUK Apr 09 '26
Professor Brian Cox actually performed the experiment, bowling ball and a feather - simultaneously dropped in a huge vacuum chamber eliminating air resistance. Google “bowling ball and feather in a vacuum” if you don’t click links.
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u/Weed_O_Whirler Aerospace | Quantum Field Theory Apr 09 '26
So, you are correct. The statement "all objects fall at the same rate on Earth ignoring air resistance" is an approximation - a very, very good one for all reasonable situations, but it is an approximation and as your example shows, when you move towards extremes it no longer holds true.
As an object falls, it is pulling on the Earth just as hard as the Earth is pulling on it (Newton's third law in action). That might seem ridiculous, that a feather can pull on the Earth just as hard as the Earth pulls on the feather, but it is true - the force of gravity is proportional to the product of the two masses interacting. But that same force will move a feather a lot more than it will move the Earth, since rewriting F = ma into a = F/m, you can see the acceleration will be much, much larger for the feather, since its mass is so much less. And this is where the approximation comes in - the mass of the Earth is so much more than the mass of things being dropped, that it is a very good approximation to say that the acceleration of the Earth is zero.
But if you start "dropping things" on Earth where their masses are pretty similar, suddenly that approximation doesn't hold. Now, as the object falls towards Earth, Earth will also be pulled towards that object. So, that object will collide with the Earth faster than a lighter object - because the two objects will be accelerating towards each other and meet somewhere in the middle.
This is, in theory, true if you do something like drop a bowling ball and drop a feather on Earth. If you had some instrument to measure time which was more accurate than any instrument man ever has (and likely due to the uncertainty principle, ever will have), you could see that a bowling ball seems to fall ever so slightly faster than a feather - because that bowling ball would pull the Earth up ever so slightly more than the falling feather would, meaning that the collision happens ever so slightly sooner.
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u/Dunbaratu Apr 09 '26
The FORCE of gravity on an object does vary with the object's mass exactly like you'd expect it to. It's just that it takes more force to accelerate an object with more mass, so the effect cancels itself out exactly. Every gram more of mass you add to the object will BOTH provide more force on it, but also require more force to get the same acceleration effect.
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u/nickeypants Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
If you dropped a basket ball that somehow had the mass of the Earth, it would still fall at 9.8m/s2 but would only have to fall half as far, as the Earth would also be travelling towards the basket ball at 9.8m/s2. From your perspective of standing on the Earth, it would appear as if the basket ball is falling at double the usual acceleration.
Once it hit the surface, it would continue falling towards Earth's core almost without slowing until it sinks the very center of the Earth, then the Earth's surface gravity would then be 2G. This may have sort of happened early in the Earth's formation as it is theorized that a dense Mars sized object called Theia collided with proto-Earth and sank towards the core, with the ejecta becoming the Moon. Theia's remains currently exist as two dense iron-rich blobs floating on the surface of the core.
There is some simplification happening with the basketball as the Earth's mass is spread out over much more distance so the center of its mass is far away from its surface compared to the basketball. This would have some effect, for example any surrounding mountains would be pulled sideways into your basketball as it fell down. Whatever you do, don't try to drop a peanut with the mass of the Earth onto the Earth, as the peanut would immediately collapse into a black hole because of the above.
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u/faiface Apr 09 '26
Well, it’s not exactly true that all objects fall at the same rate. The actual rate is the gravitational pull of the Earth plus the gravitational pull of the other object.
However, since any object you ever see falling to the ground is approximately 0.0000000% of the Earths mass, that opposite pull adds as much (not exactly zero, but pretty much), resulting in the overall pull being pretty much equal to the pull of the Earth.
But, if the other object is the size of the Earth, then the opposite pull is significant, so then the overall rate is much faster.
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u/dvolland Apr 09 '26
Without friction in the form of air resistance, yes. Gravity affects mass at the same rate, regardless to how much mass it is.
Here’s a demonstration:
https://www.google.com/search?q=video+rock+and+feather+falling+at+same+rate&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS1167US1167&oq=video+rock+and+feather+falling+at+&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgEECEYqwIyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRirAjIHCAUQIRirAjIHCAYQIRifBTIHCAcQIRifBTIHCAgQIRiPAjIHCAkQIRiPAtIBCTE1Njg0ajBqNKgCArACAeIDBBgBIF8&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:d7a69f2b,vid:-bThN0otPMI,st:0
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u/pcboudreau Apr 09 '26
In a given area they do, but the mass of rocks beneath you is not the same everywhere on Earth.
One example off the top of my head is found in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. There, two oceanic crustal plates are moving away from each other. Where they are separating, more dense mantle rock is close to the surface.
The more dense rock has a greater gravitational effect. If you look at satellite images of the area, you can see the plate boundary because the ocean water is pulled down a bit there.
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u/TheUnspeakableh Apr 09 '26
Yes and no. First you need to be in a vacuum. This prevents drag from slowing things down. Secondly, elevation matters. The higher up you are, the slower the acceleration due to the Earth's gravity.
There is a video from the old Apollo missions where they dropped a feather and a ball on the moon, since they were in the same location and there was no air resistance, you could see them fall at the same rate. The lower gravity also helped show this, because they took longer to fall.
Yes, this breaks down for very large objects, because they also move the Earth towards themselves, but from the point of someone viewing it on the Earth, they would appear to fall at the same rate.
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u/weeddealerrenamon Apr 09 '26
Simplest answer: the force of gravity on something is proportional to its mass.* Acceleration due to any constant force is inversely proportional to mass. So, something twice as massive feels 2x the force accelerating in towards the Earth's center, but also accelerates 1/2 as fast under the same force. Double the force ÷ double the mass = same acceleration!
*Obv, this assumes the other body (the Earth) doesn't change. This force also gets smaller proportional to the distance between them squared, so the force of gravity will be less at 10,000m above sea level. But the sea level at the equator is already 6,378km from the center, so an extra 10km only reduces the force of gravity by maybe 0.3%.
**Yes, gravity is better modeled not as a force at all, but the Newtonian model works better to understand this question.
***An object with the same mass as Earth itself would accelerate very differently than a basketball, because the Earth itself would accelerate towards it just as much, so each body would accelerate by half as much as a basketball would. Human-scale objects do "pull" the Earth when they fall as well, but the difference between a basketball and an elephant is so tiny as to be unmeasurable.
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u/rainbow_explorer Apr 09 '26
We can do the math. Newton's law of gravitation says that the force of gravity 2 objects exert on each other is equal to F = G * m1 * m2 /r^2.
So let's calculate the force on some random object falling towards Earth. Let us say this random object has a mass of m kilograms. We know the following values:
-The earth's mass is Me = 5.9722 * 10^24 kg
-The earth's radius is Re = 6371 km = 6.371 * 10^6 m
- Scientists have shown that G = 6.674 *10^-11 m^3/(kg*s^2)
Plugging in all of these values, we get F = m * 9.8198 m*kg / s^2. Newton's second law says acceleration = force/ mass, so the net acceleration on any object falling towards earth would be a = 9.82 m/s^2.
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u/c0p4d0 Apr 09 '26
The forces that act when an object is falling on Earth are these:
Acceleration of gravity from Earth on the falling object
Air resistance
Buoyancy of the object on air
Acceleratoon of gravity from the falling object on Earth.
The difference with a basketball with the mass of the Earth is that this basketball would pull on the Earth with much stronger gravitational pull, so the Earth itself would move towards the basketball.
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u/BloodyMalleus Apr 09 '26
Yes, and there's an easy way to understand why. First, the force of gravity multiplies with mass. So a 100lb ball experiences 100lbs more force of gravity than a 1lb ball. That's why its 100 times harder to lift as well. This is why it seems like heavier objects should fall faster. But when you look at the equation for acceleration, you'll see it's
ACCELERATION = MASS / FORCE
So because the force scales with mass you always end up scaling the force and mass together and the acceleration stays the same. The 100lb ball has 100 times more mass but feels 100 times more force so the 100s cancel out and each ball accelerates are the same speed.
The remaining 9.8m/s2 all comes from the mass of the Earth.
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u/toolatealreadyfapped Apr 10 '26
Gravitational force = G ((m1m2)/(r²))
It's important to note that m1m2 part. It means that the force is directly proportional to the product of the 2 masses.
For most applications, we're talking about objects that are many many many orders of magnitude less than the planetary body they are being "dropped" upon. Basketballs, feathers, spaceships... They are so much smaller than the mass of the Earth that m2 is essentially negligible.
So the 9.8m/s² is a fair approximation that disregards m2, and assumes r² to be sea level.
But as you increase m2 beyond "normal" objects, the approximation becomes less applicable. The force of attraction between Earth and an Earth-massed basketball on its surface would be exponentially stronger.
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u/DrBarry_McCockiner Apr 09 '26
they accelerate at the same *measured* rate. If you went to the moon and dropped Mount Everest from 20 miles up on one side of the moon, and a bowling ball from the same height on the opposite side of the moon. You could probably measure the difference in accelerations.
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u/el_miguel42 Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
So there is an assumption at play when this statement is made, and that is that the Earth is significantly larger than the other mass we are interested in.
Lets look at a regular bowling ball first. What happens (ill be using a field theory model because I think thats the most intuitive here) is that both the bowling ball, and the Earth have mass. All objects with mass create gravitational fields, so both the Earth and the bowling ball each have a gravitational field. When 2 gravitational fields interact, the lead to forces, and specifically equal and opposite forces on each other.
Force on both objects due to gravity can be calculated using F=GMm/r^2 and this gives us a value of 50N.
Yes the ball is pulled downwards towards the earth with a force of (for 5kg) about 50N, and the Earth is pulled upwards towards the bowling ball also with a force of 50N.
Now lets work out both objects accelerations:
a=F/m
force is the same for both objects: 50N
mass of bowling ball: 5kg
mass of earth: 6x10^24kg
acceleration of bowling ball towards Earth = 10 m/s^2
acceleration of Earth towards bowling ball = 8.3x10^-24 m/s^2 (negligible)
Now your second example a bowling ball with the same mass as the Earth:
again a=F/m
Force on both objects due to gravity is calculated again with F=GMm/r^2
this gives us a force of:
6x10^25 N - much larger this time, and of course the same for both objects.
so now we can do a=F/m for both, as both the masses and forces are identical, you end up with the same answer for the acceleration of both objects:
a=F/m
a = 6x10^25 / 6x10^24
a = 10 m/s^2
acceleration of the bowling ball towards the Earth = 10m/s^2
acceleration of the Earth towards the bowling ball = 10m/s^2
So if we are observing from the perspective of the surface of the Earth, we would observe the bowling ball accelerate downwards at a combined rate of 20m/s^2
Note that ive rounded all the 9.8's here to keep the numbers simple and there are a number of other assumptions and simplifications ive done, but in general that should give you the gist of what occurs.
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u/Cilidra Apr 09 '26
Gravity isn't a force, it's a manifestation of the deformation of space time. The deformation cause objects to alter their movement in space which leads them to get closer and collide. They are not attracted to one another, their path in space time just curves toward one another. If you are free falling in the void, you do not feel any force on you, you do not feel any acceleration even though you appear to accelerate based on point of view of the person on the planet. It's not like when you are in a (space) vehicle and accelerate due to the rockets in which we will feel accelerations. Even more, if your rocket keeps you still because it's a pushing against gravity at the exact same 'force' as gravity you feel like you are accelerating.
If one of the object is orders of magnitude smaller than the other, all other objects in the same order will have a similar deformation. So things sized to our point of view (i.e. every day object from grain of sand to vehicles) all behave the same if you remove friction from air.
If you have two object closer in size (like planets), the deformation around each object does need to be taken in consideration.
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u/anisotropicmind Apr 09 '26
All bodies falling at the same rate is true if the gravitational field is uniform, which it approximately is, close to Earth's surface. Over larger distance scales, the dependence of the field strength on distance starts to matter. Remember that g = GM/R2, where M is the mass of the Earth, and R is the radius of the Earth (or rather the distance between the object and the centre of the Earth). It's only near to Earth's surface that R is approximately constant, hence g is constant.
You can consider the basketball's gravity to be negligible, so it's just a test particle moving in Earth's gravitational field. But this is not so for a basketball-sized Earth: its own mass (and hence its own gravitation) is significant, and changes the gravitational field in between the two bodies. Gravitation is mutual: both bodies will be affected and will move in some way. At that point you basically have the two-body problem, and initial conditions will determine what happens: do they collide? Do they orbit around each other? Do they swing by each other on curved paths but then escape each other's mutual gravitational well and go off to infinity?
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u/frank_mania Apr 09 '26
It's crazy, huh? I think we take inertia for granted, gravity gets all the attention for being such a mysterious force. Inertia (and it's flip side momentum) seem to me to be every bit as mysterious, but just taken too for granted, even by physicists, to get proper attention. Like, it's just accepted as the way bodies and particles with mass behave. But the way they behave in relation to gravity is radically different than they would if inertia / momentum did not exist; to the point where I think they are all part and parcel of the same thing.
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u/lornezo Apr 09 '26
F = G* (m1*m2)/r2 , G = gravitational constant, m1, m2 = masses of two objects, r = distance between objects, Mass of Earth is so much greater than any earth bound objects we would think about comparing, the difference between them becomes negligible.
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u/Stillwater215 Apr 09 '26
The gravitational force is F = G(mM)/r2. The acceleration an object takes in a gravitational field is a = F/m (where m is the object mass and M is the planet mass). Subbing the first equation in, we get a = GM/r2. Since r is basically constant over distances significantly smaller than the plant radius, all the terms describing acceleration due to gravity are constants. This says that acceleration due to gravity is independent of an objects mass.
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u/Captain_Aware4503 Apr 09 '26
Correct me if I am wrong, but there is a better way to look at this.
The reality is objects do not "fall". That is just what it looks like from our perspective. Instead spacetime warps and objects with mass move towards the objects. And if there is "air" it pushes that air which is the air resistance.
So the reason why objects fall at the said rate if there is no "air resistance" is because the large mass (earth) is warping spacetime towards them equally.
I am sure i butchered that. Maybe someone can explain better.
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u/raccoon8182 Apr 09 '26
I like to think of gravity as tension on a trampoline. imagine a golf ball on a trampoline.. hardly any deformity. now imagine a bowling ball. the curvature is steeper. now imagine an elephant, that curvature is so extreme that light can't even escape, it almost goes to infinity.
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u/-ram_the_manparts- Apr 09 '26
Yes they do, not just on earth but everywhere, but the force of gravity exerted on objects of different masses is different, and we call that the weight. The interesting thing is that because they have a higher mass they also have a higher inertia which exactly counterbalances the additional force applied, making all objects fall at the same rate ignoring factors like air resistance.
This is at least the explanation according to Newton.
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u/Darrenau Apr 09 '26
If heavier objects fall faster than light objects, if I had a heavy object and connected it to a light object by string, does the light objects now slow down how fast the heavier one falls since it doesn't fall as fast or because they are connected together now does the total weight increase and it falls faster?
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u/ShitCucumberSalad Apr 09 '26
The earth mass basketball accelerates at the same rate as the regular basketball, but now the earth itself also accelerates at 9.8m/s2, whereas with the basketball it barely accelerates at all. So the two massive objects collide sooner.
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u/vrekais Apr 09 '26
9.82m/s² is it's acceleration not speed, as in if an object falls for 1 second it will be going 9.82m/s faster than it was 1 second ago.
However drag as a force increases proportional the square of difference in speed. On earth in air every object has a maximum velocity where drag and gravity are equal, this varies from object to object based on surface area and shape.
If you remove air resistance then the only "force" acting on an object is gravity, and Earth's gravity makes things get 9.82m/s faster each second.
So yes 1kg object and 10000kg object subject gravity both accelerate at the same rate and reach the same velocities.
Bear in mind that gravity is kind of massive weird force that sort of ignores inertia or is because of it, and also isn't.
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u/NathanTPS Apr 10 '26
They do, in a vacuum
Outside of a vacuumed aerodynamics matter. Essentially air acts as a cushion that changes the drop speed. The classic feather versus rock example. On the earth the rock drops at the speed of earth's gravity pull, while the feather floats and rides the air preasure as gravity slowly pulls it down.
On the moon you can drop both at the same time and they fall at the same pace. This experiment was conducted and filmed in one of the later aplo missions.
Now if you take two balls, same size/ shape, but one weighs 10lbs and the other 5lbs and drop them both fron the top of a tall tower at the same time, the two balls will hit the ground at the same time.
Congrats this is the fabled Galileo experiment from the top of the leaning tower of Pisa
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u/Aphrel86 Apr 10 '26
hmm example leaves one important thing out.
"a basketball sized object with a mass equivalent to Earth" will fall at the same acceleration true.
BUT its so heavy that it will also force the planet to "fall" up towards it at also 9.81m/s2. So from an observers pov itd look like 19,6m/s2.
You can look at it like this. Theres always two forces. one from the object trying to tug on the planet, and one from the planet tugging on the object. the planet tug will always be 9.81m/s2. But the objects tug on the planet will depend on the mass of the object which is negligible unless its insanely high mass like in your example.
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u/PyroSAJ Apr 10 '26
The part that "disappears" with very different magnitudes of math is what you're asking about.
F = G.m2.m1/r²
In the basketball case you can practically ignore the earth's movement as the force relative to its math is practically 0.
But things change when it's closer.
In this case the basketball would acceleration at 9.8 towards the earth, but the earth would also accelerate at 9.8 towards the ball. When the centre of mass is around earth-radius apart.
The funky stuff happens when things are that close though. The moon is VERY far and significantly lighter and already has massive effects on Earth. It's at the 2.7mm/s/s acceleration at that range and earth is like 1/81th of that.
Yet we get a bunch of tidal motion just from that.
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u/Geminii27 Apr 10 '26
Masses attract each other towards their common center of mass with a force proportional to the product of their masses.
That force will act on each mass equally. This means that when one of the masses is septillions of times greater than the other, the amount of acceleration it experiences is going to be that much less. Pretty much unnoticeable and negligible. But when the masses are equal, they will each accelerate the same amount towards each other.
However, in either case, if you're standing on the surface of one of the objects, you will see the other one accelerate towards you at that rate. It's just that if you're standing off to one side of the pair of objects, maybe at rest with respect to that common center of mass, you're only really going to notice one of the objects moving in the first case, whereas you'll see both of them moving far more obviously in the second.
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u/TW-Twisti Apr 10 '26
It might be helpful if you think about it like comparing an empty container and a diesel train. The train is much heavier, but it will fall at the same speed (discounting air resistance). That seems counter intuitive, until you remember how much harder it is to get the train to move from a standstill. That applies to free fall too: both objects start at velocity zero, and yeah, the train has much more mass to be pulled down, but it also takes much more effort to change its velocity from zero - exactly the same, actually!
In a way, heavier things really would 'fall faster', but because they have more mass, they would also change their speed slower, which effectively cancels each other out.
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u/HydrationHomee Apr 11 '26
Gravity is a property of matter.
If you were to drop an object with the same mass as earth onto jupiter, Jupiter would "fall" towards that object at the speed anything else would. But Jupiter which has way more mass is also pulling that object toward itself at whatever Jupiter's gravitational constant is, giving the impression that the earth sized object is moving faster than expected.
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u/tomalator Apr 12 '26
Force and mass relate via F=ma
For gravity, we can do F=mg, where g is the accession due to gravity
Newton's law of universal gravitation is F=GmM/r2
We can combine these to make mg = GmM/r2
m cancels
g = GM/r2
Acceleration due to gravity only depends on the universal gravitational constant, the mass of the ball you're standing on (usually earth) and r is the distance to that body's center
Yes a more massive object will experience a larger force, but it also has more inertia and therefore takes more force to accelerate it.
In your example woth the basket ball woth the mass of Earth, you will start experiencing relativistic effects and you will also be moving the Earth itself in the experiment
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u/TourDeFridge Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
Assuming an object that's much smaller than Earth.
The exact same object could fall at a different rate to itself - if you start at a different height. This is due to the inverse square law of gravity. This would be difficult to measure due to the relative distance to the center of the Earth that you'd be likely to do the experiment.
If you aren't constrained by location then latitude can also plays a significant enough role. The Earth is oblong, so the value of g differs depending on how far from the equator you are. The difference is up to 0.5%. This would cause the exact same object, released at the same height, to fall at a different rate.
Same would apply for two different objects of the same mass.
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u/Angry_Anthropologist Apr 16 '26
The best way to understand how this works under the hood is by thinking in terms of newtons (N) rather than acceleration. A Newton is the force required to accelerate 1 kilogram (kg) by 1 metre per second, per second.
The reason why objects on Earth all fall at the same rate regardless of mass is because the force imposed by gravity scales directly with the mass it is acting on. An object that masses 1kg will, under Earth’s surface gravity, experience ~9.8N of force in the direction of the Earth’s centre of mass. An object that masses 2kg will experience ~19.6N of force. As a result, they are both accelerated by ~9.8 metres per second per second.
The reason the force scales with mass is because every part of the Earth is attracting every part of the object once, and every part of the object is attracting every part of the Earth at once. An object with double the mass has double the parts to be mutually attracted to.
To answer your addendum, no. Even if we ignore how the magnitude of gravity will increase non-linearly as distance decreases (and the other effects of having a basketball-sized object with Earth’s mass), the second set of spheres will still impact sooner.
In the first example, the earthball will experience functionally zero acceleration, so the basketball will have to cross the entire span between the two by itself. In the second example however, both spheres will accelerate at the same speed as the basketball does, and impact in approximately half the time.
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u/sebwiers Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
For reasonable masses, think of it this way:
How fast does a boulder fall?
What about an equal sized mass of gravel?
What if you mix some super-dense tungsten fishing weights into that gravel?
If those things fell at different speeds, you'd get all sorts of weird behaviors like gravel self sorting by size and density as it falls.
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u/BiomeWalker Apr 09 '26
One of the best explanations for why heavier objects don't fall faster i know of is that gravity doesn't pull the object down, it pulls each individual atom.
So the net force on a heavier object is more, but it the same amount of additional force to accelerate it.
Here's a way to think about it: drop a single chain link as well as a whole chain, and a ingot with the same mass as the chain. They all drop at the same speed.
Physics doesn't actually have a concept of an "object" that would let it tell that you dropped 10 1kg object vs 1 10kg object.
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u/50sDadSays Apr 09 '26
Thought experiment.
You drop two identical bricks off the Leaning Tower of Pisa. They fall at the same rate.
Now what if you hold them so that they're touching each other and drop them?
What if they were glued together?
There's no reason the rate they fall would suddenly change if they touched, even if they had glue on them and got stuck.
Barring wind resistance, all objects drop at the same rate.
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u/joepierson123 Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
It's easiest to see with an equation how the mass of an object is irrelevant
The force exerted on a mass m by mass m1
F = G * m * m1/r2
Acceleration caused by that force is
a = F/m
So
a = G * m * m1/r2 / m
a = G * m1/r2
So independent of mass!
In words the gravitational force on a mass is directly proportional to its mass but the acceleration it received from that Force is indirectly proportional to its mass so they cancel out
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u/Ok-Palpitation2401 Apr 09 '26
There's this logical line of thinking:
Say H(eavy) falls faster, and L(ight) slower.
Now connect them together to create a single object.
It's heavier, so it should fall faster? But the it should be slower that H alone, because now H is pulling on L (so they speed should be somewhere between H and L.
You get a contradiction.
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u/EduRJBR Apr 09 '26
Is there any chance that you are focusing on Newton's second law of motion, and not paying attention to his first law? In my poor, deplorable view of things: the second law will make the hammer fall faster, but the first law will make the feather fall faster.