Sep 25, 2009

Hammer and Feather Drop on Moon



The idea that, given ideal conditions, a hammer and feather would drop at the same rate in a vacuum wasn't originally proposed with space exploration. As the video suggests, it happened hundreds of years before, with Italian thinker Galileo, who said that, due to a lack of air resistance, a hammer and feather would fall at exactly the same rate.

On the Berto: Philosophy Monkey blog, the proposal is illustrated more in-depth:

He argued, contra the Aristotelian model, that falling bodies of different weights (say, a feather and a hammer) should not fall at different speeds. Any differences, he thought, could be wholly attributed to air resistance slowing down the feather.


Now, trying to find a font of objective knowledge on the subject is futile, bordering on impossible, because the overwhelming majority of sites exploring the thought experiment are dedicated to entirely debunking it (and the idea that we went to the moon in the first place). Including, I might add, the esteemed and highly reputable science source Wrestlingforums.net, as opposed, of course, to the highly reputable blog, Jinx Protocol.

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