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What about an object that has been thrown up vertically, such as a piece of chalk that I throw upwards, just after it has left my hand? Even an object that has been thrown up and is still rising fits the ‘free fall’ definition so the equations of free fall can be used (just be careful to use ‘+’ and ‘-’ signs to indicate direction properly). Note that at that moment the object has an acceleration (downwards) even though it has zero velocity.

But what about an object that has been thrown straight up and is at the top of its motion and thus stationary for a moment – is it in free fall? Yes – it fits our definition of free fall even though it is not moving at that moment in time. So ‘free fall motion’ is the motion of an object acted on by gravity alone (air resistance not significant). At the surface of the earth g is equal to about 9.81 m/s² - we often round that to 10 m/s² to make calculations easier. The acceleration of objects acted on by gravity ONLY (and not air resistance) is called the acceleration due to gravity or the acceleration of free fall or the gravitational field strength and is represented be ‘ g ’. However, if the metal ball is allowed to fall side by side with a feather in a tube from which the air has been removed (a vacuum tube) then they would fall side by side! When astronauts went to the moon one of the experiments they did was to drop a hammer and feather together – they fell side by side and hit the lunar surface at the same time. On the moon there is no atmosphere so no vacuum tube is necessary. Something like a feather, a leaf or a sheet of paper would NOT have such a big acceleration for it would be significantly affected by air resistance. In fact all objects falling near the earth’s surface have the same acceleration provided they are not significantly affected by air resistance.

They were seen to fall side by side and hit the ground at the same time (if you put a metal plate on the ground then the experiment is even more convincing for you hear a ‘bang’ not a ‘bang-bang’). This is an experiment that was first done (it is said) by Galileo, who dropped two balls from the top of the leaning tower of Pisa. If you were to drop two metal balls from the top of a high building, using ball of very different masses (say one ball five times heavier than the other) then what do you think would happen? A the heavy ball would hit the ground significantly before the lighter ball B the lighter ball would hit the ground significantly before the heavier ball C the two balls would hit the ground at almost exactly the same time If you miss or are inattentive to the oral presentation then the PowerPoint presentation in itself may not be fully meaningful.

#FINDING ACCELERATION DUE TO GRAVITY LAB DOWNLOAD#

Ward European School Brussels 3 Download this presentation from Note that my PowerPoint presentations are designed to accompany oral presentations – they are not designed to be self-contained.

Finding acceleration due to gravity lab