Thrown out of an FBO...

In article ,
Jim Logajan wrote:

Jose wrote:
It was obvious that heavier
things fall faster (feather, stone, duh)
Actually, they don't.

Correct. But it was obvious that they do.

Boy, I hate to be pedantic about this, but in a vacuum the heavier object
_will_ reach the surface of the earth faster than a lighter one if both
are released the same height above the ground. First, the forces are
equal on a mass Mo and the earth Me a distance h apart from their
gravitational centers; the equation being:
[etc.]

Interesting. You're saying the earth accelerates towards the heavy
object a little bit faster than towards the light one, right? But
there's only one earth, and if you drop them both at the same time,
don't they both hit the rising earth at the same time? You didn't
say they were released at the same time, but that was the implication
in the thread.

Mike Beede

Mike Beede wrote:
But
there's only one earth, and if you drop them both at the same time,
don't they both hit the rising earth at the same time? You didn't
say they were released at the same time, but that was the implication
in the thread.

I was treating the case where only two objects were in motion at any one
time - it's a lot simpler.

Since the implied problem is a three body problem it isn't going to be so
easy to prove that two objects of different masses released at the same
time will accelerate at the same rate towards the center of the earth. The
actual trajectories are going to be surprisingly complex.