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What aspect of motion can you conclude is common among freely falling objects ?

User BitPusher
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Answer:

Free-fall is defined as the movement where the only force acting on an object is the gravitational force.

By the second Newton's law, we have that:

F = m*a

Where F = Force, m = mass, a = acceleration.

We can write this as:

a = F/m

And the gravitational force can be written as:

F = (G*M/r^2)*m

Where G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of the Earth in this case, and r is the distance between both objects (the center of the Earth and the free-falling object)

As the radius of the Earth is really big, the term inside the parentheses is almost constant in the region of interest, then we can write:

G*M/r^2 ≈ g

And the gravitational force is:

F = g*m

And by the second Newton's law we had:

a = F/m = (g*m)/m = g

a = g

Then the acceleration does not depend on the mass of the object.

Then the thing that is common among the free-falling objects is the vertical acceleration.

User CrazyTim
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