Misconceptions About Falling Objects

Wow, how annoyed must that guy have been to come back and see a 12ft medicine ball on top of his car?

You forgot to add "assuming no air resistance" to this!

I liked seeing how instead of making the people who didn't know feel bad, he was able to interest them.

Very interesting, I never thought of it this way but it makes a lot of sense. Objects with more mass take more force to accelerate up to X speed when pushed on wheels over a smooth floor... but the same acceleration delay applies to gravity accelerating the object in freefall. Crazy! Great explanation.

Except they really don't fall at the same time, because you know, air.

you could ask them "what will happen if you tie these two balls together",there might be two answers: 1. they'll go faster, because their weight adds up 2. they'll go by their average speed, because the lighter one is pulling upward while the heavier one wants to go faster so there, you can easily explain and make people feel that there's somehow wrong with it

Excellent progression of understanding for the woman who first thought the medicine ball would hit the ground first, saw that she was incorrect and said she "needs to read more books", then proposed the idea of "maybe the weight is holding it back", then finishes by saying "like a heavy car that doesn't want to accelerate". I can only imagine that Newton himself went through this line of thinking. Nice job making this happen Derek, and the woman is impressive that she used prior knowledge to grow her understanding...out of everyone in this video, she's the most likely to remember this idea.

if u dropped the balls from high enough then the terminal velocity of the medicine ball would exceed that of the basketball and therefore would hit the ground first

i thought everyone knew this

That is only true on vacuum. The air drag actually makes the basketball slower, and its terminal speed would be much lower than the black ball, so in a taller drop you could see a very important difference. I think you have actually caused more misconceptions with this particular video than the ones you ended.

The animation at the end where the ball squishes the car is completely unneccesary, I love it. Doing extra, even if you don't have to. You know who does that? Great people.

looking at this 7 years later, you see how much has changed in production

This video is fantastic! If you don't mind me asking, what software did you use to do the 3D balls and the car being crushed? I've done similar visual effects with Element 3D in After Effects, but nothing that advanced. I'd love to know!

I had no idea there were so many Aristotelians out there!

At this point, I'm just going to subscribe. Don't know when I'll find the time to watch, but these are great! Good job.

It is just amazing. Every single video you do is just awesome and so useful!!!! Great.

I love the old dude who assumed Derek was using magic!

Depending on how high you drop it from the heavier ball would land first because of velocity. The lighter ball would be affected more by the air resistance.

Very very nice way of demonstrating this while not going to the moon! Kudos for that. Real good video! Compliments and thanks

Do most people just not take physics classes ever? I feel like asking which would hit the ground first is like asking what 1 times 0 is...