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Veritasium
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These resources have been reviewed and selected by STEM Learning’s team of education specialists for factual accuracy and relevance to teaching STEM subjects in UK schools.
Which hits the ground first
A basketball and a 5kg medicine ball are dropped simultaneously. Which one hits the ground first? It seems obvious that the heavy one should accelerate at a greater rate and therefore land first because the force pulling it down is greater. But this is forgetting inertia - the tendency of mass to resist changes in motion. Therefore, although the force on the medicine ball is greater, it takes this larger force to accelerate the ball at the same rate as the basketball.
This video explains the same ideas as Misconceptions about falling objects.
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