Gravity Index

Weight Drop Experiments

Galileo lived four hundred years ago. After doing some careful experiments, he decided that heavy bodies and light bodies would fall at the same rate, if there was no air resistance. This contradicted what people had believed until then - that heavy bodies fall faster because of their heaviness.

We attempted to check Galileo's observations by recording some weight drops on video and examining the results.

Instructions
Movies
Frame by Frame


Michael Gallagher and ESC Astronomy Class, September 2001