Jed Rothwell wrote: > By the way, Galileo's proof that all bodies fall in the gravitational > field with the same acceleration was not experimental. He never > dropped anything off the Tower of Pisa. It was a pure "thought > experiment," like Einstein's early work in special relativity. He > asked a simple question: "If a large body falls faster than a small > one, what happens when you chain the two together? Do they fall at > the average speed? Does the lighter one retard the heavy one?" > Everyone could see that was absurd. > > - Jed
Well he did study balls rolling down a ramp inclined at various angles. He found the distance covered was proportional to the square of the time. He also noticed that the time of descent (as he could measure it) did not appear to be affected by the weight of the ball. By extrapolation he reasoned that if free fall corresponded to a vertical ramp all weights should fall the same distance in the same time. Harry
