this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] WizardofFrobozz@lemmy.ca 79 points 4 days ago (10 children)

I am most certainly not a science whiz but it's so goddamn funny to see this whole comment section full of people just... explaning and correcting each other poorly with varying degrees of correctness. Just like 50 half-true and misremembered tidbits from everyone's intro to high school physics class, blindly seeking targets in space. I promise you guys, there's a very straight answer to this like two or three clicks away, written more clearly and succinctly than anyone here is managing to do.

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 36 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Don't tell them that. You're contaminating my petri dish. ;)

[–] SorryQuick@lemmy.ca 10 points 4 days ago

Lemmy (or most social media) in a nutshell.

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[–] missingno@fedia.io 107 points 4 days ago (6 children)

When accounting for air resistance, heavy objects do fall faster than light ones. They couldn't test in a vacuum back then, they only knew how things work here in Earth's atmosphere.

[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 49 points 4 days ago (3 children)

A similar size chunk of iron and coal would have done the experiment just fine. Any two objects of the same shape and size but significantly different densities.

[–] missingno@fedia.io 57 points 4 days ago (22 children)

If two objects have the same size and shape, the force applied by air resistance will be the same. However, if two objects have different mass, that same force will result in different acceleration.

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[–] it_depends_man@lemmy.world 56 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

The thing that always gets me about the Renaissance is Galileo:

He did those experiments with things falling down? Measuring speed?

Yeah. Without a clock.

The theory for how to build those came later, based on what Galileo did.

[–] MajorMajormajormajor@lemmy.ca 42 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Man, being a cop must have sucked before they invented time.

Officer: do you know how fast you were going?

Lord: No, do you?

Officer grumbles: you're free to go.

Carriage pulls away

Officer ClocknTime: For now, for now.

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[–] markovs_gun@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

Clocks existed then though. The oldest clocktower in Europe that still exists was built over 100 years before Galileo was born, and time measurement existed longer than that. You can measure time fairly accurately with water clocks which had been known for thousands of years before Galileo. Not having "modern" pendulum clocks yet doesn't mean that they didn't have any way to measure time. Even without water clocks you can get decently reliable measurements of time with rhythmic chants (think how today we might say "one Mississippi, two Mississippi, etc.). Early alchemical recipes often include time measurements in chanting a specific prayer or passage a certain number of times during a specific step. Sure you're not going to get milisecond level accuracy this way but you don't really need that for a lot of things. Hero of Alexandria built mechanical automata 1500 years before Galileo using pulleys and weights as timers. Time measurement not only existed before pendulum clocks, it was pretty decent.

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[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 46 points 4 days ago (7 children)
[–] LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (8 children)

https://www.usgs.gov/water-science-school/science/how-much-does-a-cloud-weigh

Doing the math: 1,000,000,000 x 0.5 = 500,000,000 grams of water droplets in our cloud. That is about 500,000 kilograms or 1.1 million pounds (about 551 tons). But, that "heavy" cloud is floating over your head because the air below it is even heavier— the lesser density of the cloud allows it to float on the dryer and more-dense air.

Planes, helicopters- lots heavy stuff not falling faster than lighter ones

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[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 27 points 4 days ago (1 children)

To be fair to Archimedes, heavy objects do usually fall faster than light ones*, and to be fair to Newton, stuff coming towards you usually has a higher relative velocity than things going away from you.+

*You need your objects to be weigh a lot relative to their air resistance to notice otherwise.

+You need some pretty ambitious equipment to detect that electromagnetic radiation such as light does not follow this pattern.

[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 4 days ago

If you like novels I highly recommend Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson. It has a moment where Galileo realizes you could "weigh" time, in his experiments with objects rolling down an inclined plane.

[–] DreadPirateShawn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 31 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Rosencrantz: [holds up a feather and a wooden ball] Look at this. You would think this would fall faster than this.
[drops them. ball hits the ground first]
...and you would be absolutely right.

~ Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

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[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 21 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Aristotle said so much dumb shit, like he said that women have less teeth and never bothered to check

[–] Ludrol@szmer.info 11 points 4 days ago
[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

TBF it took awhile to work out vacuum chamber technology, and some people did throw some spherical stuff off the tower of pisa at one point.

[–] Carl@hexbear.net 24 points 4 days ago

They did figure out the earth was round and measure its size with sticks and shadows though, so that's pretty cool.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 19 points 4 days ago (18 children)

With same gravity constance everything fall down at the same speed, but only in a vacuum. In an atmosphere there count the air resistance of an object, even if they are made of the same material and weight, an iron sphere of 1 kg fall faster than a iron sheet of 1 kg.

[–] multifariace@lemmy.world 13 points 4 days ago

That's why Gallileo's balls were so special.

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[–] Ceruleum@lemmy.wtf 5 points 3 days ago

These days, everything seems to be made out shit & piss.

[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 12 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Did you know that two identical triangles are identical to each other

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[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 13 points 4 days ago (6 children)
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[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

What if a planet that is Earth-sized falls down on Earth from let's say 5-10 meters though?

[–] hansolo@lemmy.today 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)
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[–] mEEGal@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

A thing that size would have initial velocity to begin with,

But acceleration does not depend on mass, (which is kinda weird from an earthling's perspective), which Einstein formalized in an amazingly powerful theory called General Relativity

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[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (8 children)

~~I mean, yes and no.~~ ~~https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_velocity#Physics ~~ ~~Heavier objects have a higher "max speed" that they can fall at, compared to lighter objects. The acceleration to that relative speed is constant though. More or less.~~

~~IE : While a bowling ball and a ping pong ball might start falling at the same initial rate, eventually the bowling ball will fall faster.~~

EDIT : Ignore me for now, I need to do more digging.

[–] rockerface@lemmy.cafe 35 points 4 days ago (1 children)

In a medium, which is an important distinction

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[–] Empricorn@feddit.nl 30 points 4 days ago (2 children)

That's not because of weight though. That's just one thing being affected more by air resistance. In a vacuum, there would be no difference. In fact, they did just that during the Apollo 15 mission on the moon using a feather and a hammer:

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_15_feather_and_hammer_drop.ogv

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