Hello! Aristotle VS Galileo--Hmm Who was REALLY correct?

[popniklas]

Aristotle is wrong. In fact, he claimed a lot of things that easily could be proven wrong (such as how many teeth a horse has, for example) but were not officially proved wrong for many centuries. Since people in the academic world respected him so much, they were afraid to say he was wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I still give him credit for being a great philosopher and scientist of his time, but don't think that something must be correct just because Aristotle said so.

[pzhon]

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I've always heard that Galileo proved Aristotle wrong when the former demonstrated that if 2 unequal masses fall from the same height,the one with the greater mass will arrive at the base at the same time as the lighter mass.
Of course,Aristotle postulated that the heavier mass would arrive at the base BEFORE the lighter mass.

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I haven't read the original, but Aristotle is supposed to have claimed much more than that. He claimed that something that is twice as heavy will take half of the time to fall.

Neither is exactly right. Galileo is much, much closer to right, particularly when you drop objects with a mass much lower than Earth's mass. Aristotle would be closer to correct if you were dropping objects a thousand times more massive than Earth, or rather, dropping Earth toward those objects.

By the way, Galileo was not the first to propose the idea that objects fall at the same rate regardless of mass. He tested it, extended it, and publicized the results.

See Isaac Asimov's essay "The Relativity of Wrong."

[Hermlord]

I don't know what SittingBull is trying to get at, but from what I know of him (only from past posts) he's likely well-aware of the "obviously correct" answer that Galileo is right. This is probably some roundabout way of getting at a philosophical issue, rather than a physics question.

What that philosophical issue is, I have absolutely no idea. Subjective nature of truth??

(OK, so I have absolutely one idea. Nits [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img])

[SittingBull]

his EXPERIMENTS were NOT performed in the same reference frame as he was in.They were conducted in a near-vacuum . Both Galileo and Aristotle were in the SAME reference frame. Aristotle's observations were performed in the SAME frame as he was in.;this was NOT the case with Galileo ,whose experiments were in a different reference frame than he was in.
NOTE: REFERENCE FRAME #1: VACUUM WORLD
REFERENCE FRAME#2 ATMOSPHERIC WORLD

SittingBull

SittingBUll

[SittingBull]

If U think about the fact that we do NOT live in a vauum and Aristotle's observations were performed in our REAL atmospheric world,then aristotle IS CORRECT. If U dropped a larger mass at the same height as a lighter mass then the heavier mass WILL ALWAYS arrive on the ground BEFORE the lighter mass. This IS a fact. This is because we are living in an atmospheric planet where the retarding force of the ligher mass will ALWAYS have a much greater impact on the lighter mass than it does on the heavier one. Hence,this resistance force will prevent the lighter mass from reaching the ground at the same time as the heavier mass.
SittingBull

[Zygote]

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If U think about the fact that we do NOT live in a vauum and Aristotle's observations were performed in our REAL atmospheric world,then aristotle IS CORRECT. If U dropped a larger mass at the same height as a lighter mass then the heavier mass WILL ALWAYS arrive on the ground BEFORE the lighter mass. This IS a fact. This is because we are living in an atmospheric planet where the retarding force of the ligher mass will ALWAYS have a much greater impact on the lighter mass than it does on the heavier one. Hence,this resistance force will prevent the lighter mass from reaching the ground at the same time as the heavier mass.
SittingBull

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What i think you fail to understand is that Galileo did not factor air resistance when making his claim.

What you are apparently asking is essentially a trick question.

[Bodhi]

Your reply is a non-sequitor sitting-bull.

[Dov]

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If U dropped a larger mass at the same height as a lighter mass then the heavier mass WILL ALWAYS arrive on the ground BEFORE the lighter mass.

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This has nothing to do with mass, it has to do with streamlining.

If you take 2 pieces of paper and glue them together, then take 1 piece of paper and crumple it up, then drop them both off of a 3 story building, which one will hit the ground first?

Oh, the crumpled one you say? But it's mass is 1/2 that of the other. How do you explain that?

BTW, Galileo didn't do his experiments in a vacuum. He used an inclined plane to slow the rate of falling objects so he could study them.

Aristotle believed that all objects have a natural falling speed which is proportional to its weight.

An interesting logical contradiction exists here.

According to Aristotle, if you tied a lighter mass to a heavier one, the whole thing should fall more slowly than if you dropped the heavy one by itself.

This is because if you add the natural falling speeds of the 2 objects together, the lighter one will hold back the heavier one.

But being tied together, they should fall faster than either one of them does separately.

Aristotle can't have it both ways.

Galileo pointed this out quite eloquently in his writings.

[Dov]

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This IS a fact. This is because we are living in an atmospheric planet where the retarding force of the ligher mass will ALWAYS have a much greater impact on the lighter mass than it does on the heavier one. Hence,this resistance force will prevent the lighter mass from reaching the ground at the same time as the heavier mass.

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This is not a fact. This is actually not true at all.

You are confusing surface area with mass.

[BadBoyBenny]

I think you won't get a reply from sitting bull because you exposed his question as way less tricky than he thought.