Why is it that all abjects accelerate towards the earth at the same times??

Question

This is a science question on my homework...please can you help me??

Answer 1

You mean at the same rate - 32.2 feet per second per second.

Gravity pulls on all matter at the same rate. If you drop a bowling ball taped to a baseball, they will fall at the same rate. But it is not because the bowling ball is pulling on the baseball, it is because gravity is pulling on both of them. If the tape breaks gravity will still be pulling on both of them at the same rate. They will hit the ground at the same speed, however, they will hit with different forces. Because Force = mass x acceleration. The acceleration is the same for both of them. But the mass of the bowling ball is larger than the mass of the baseball, so it will hit the ground with more force.

Answer 2

Hope your question is, “why all objects have the same (constant) acceleration due to gravity?".

The forces acting on different objects are not the same.

The forces acting on objects are due to the attracting property between masses.

Therefore, the force is directly proportional to the mass of the body.

Greater the mass, greater is the force.

A 10 kg mass is attracted toward the earth with a force of 10 newton.
A 100 kg mass is attracted toward the earth with a force of 100 newton and so on.

Thus we see that force is directly proportional to the mass of the body.

Therefore (force / mass) is a constant.

(Force/mass) is acceleration.

Therefore acceleration due to gravity is a constant.

Let us see some numerical example.

Consider two objects one 5kg and another 10 kg.

Place 5kg in one pan of a balance and the 10kg in the other pan.

The pan having 10 kg mass comes down and the one having 5kg goes up.

This shows that the earth pulls the 10kg mass with a great force; (100 newton).

The 5 kg mass is pulled by 50 newton.

Thus we understand that earth pulls small mass with small force and heavy mass with heavy force.

If a force is applied on an object, it will move with acceleration.

Acceleration means the speed of the object changes; it is not mere change of speed; the speed is continuously changing as long as the force acts.

Each kilo gram mass of an object is pulled by a force of 10 newton by earth.

Thus the 5 kg mass is pulled by 50 newton whereas 10kg mass is pulled by 100 newton.

If nothing prevents them from falling, both will fall toward the earth with some acceleration.

The acceleration is found by dividing the force by mass. Therefore the acceleration of 5 kg mass is 50/ 5 = 10 m/s^2.

Similarly the acceleration of 10 kg mass is 100/ 10 = 10 m/s^2.

There fore, both have the same acceleration; that is both change their speed by an amount 10m/s every second. Thus even though the masses are different both take the same time to travel the same distance.

Answer 3

This "why" is what actually lead Einstein to develop his theory of General Relativity, which took him years to work out, so it's amazing that you're expected to answer this as part of homework. Newton just assumed that the force would be proportional to the product of the attracting masses divided by the square of the distance, but if one of the masses is a given, like earth, the acceleration of the other is first found by dividing the force by the other mass. The result is that all masses falling towards earth has the same acceleration. Of course, Einstein did not accept this pat assumption, and went ahead and explained it using curved spacetime and stress-energy tensors. Ask your teacher what's a stress-energy tensor.

Answer 4

mass times gravity equals the accelaration rate...

Answer 5

not really. Mass/weight of the object is considered.

Answer 6

Gravity

Cannot give you all the answers, please do some research on Gravity. That is your home work!