Bob Noel wrote:
In article ,
Jim Logajan wrote:
But the bottom line is under "ideal" conditions a heavy stone "falls"
a teeny tiny miniscule bit faster to the earth than a light feather
would.

um, not quite. The force on the more massive object is still just
proportional to the earth's mass. What happens is the earth moves
towards the more massive object more so than towards the less massive
object.

Or have I totally botched my freshman physics?

You got it right. But to the person standing on the earth trying to time
the fall, the more massive object appears to drop a tiny bit faster (but
I'm not sure the drop time difference could even be measured for most
ordinary cases).

It's really a pedantic issue unless one is dealing with objects of
comparable masses, like the perturbations of planetary orbits due to other
planets.