a heavier object would be affected by more gravitational force, since force due to gravity is 'mg'. So when a

Question

heavier object is falling, naturally it's pulled to the earth with a greater force. what makes it fall at the same rate as a lighter body. i don't get why the acceleration due to gravity has to be sthe same for all bodies irrespective of their masses.

thanks:)

Answer 1

F = ma where F is in Newtons, m is in kg, and a is in m/s².
It falls at the same rate because, as the force on it increases, it's mass has also increased (since that's what caused the force to increase in the first place) by exactly the same percentage so that
F/m = g = a constant.

Doug

Answer 2

You know
“Heavier object is falling; naturally it's pulled to the earth with a greater force”.

It is the reason that all bodies have the same acceleration; only if it were not like that then the acceleration of objects will differ.

When a 5kg object is placed in the left pan of a beam balance and a 10 kg object is placed on the right pan, the right pan goes down and left pan goes up showing that the earth pulls the 10 kg with greater force than the 5 kg.


We know now that a force of 100 N is exerted on 10kg and 50N on the 5kg.

Same force is not applied on the objects.

Leave the gravitational force for a while; let us find what happens when a force is applied on objects on a horizontal plane.

Place the two objects on a table.
Apply a force of 100N on the 10 kg object and
50N (less force) on the 5kg object.
What will be the acceleration of the two objects?

One force is two times greater than the other; but the mass on which greater force is applied is half of the other; naturally the acceleration is the same for both.

Mathematically,

Acceleration = Force / mass. = F/m

If force is proportional to mass, (when mass is increased force is also increased), then a is a constant.

Since a is constant, all bodies under gravitational pull has the same acceleration.

Only if the gravitational force were not proportional to the mass, then different bodies will have different acceleration.

In the day to day life, we come across force and acceleration. Here, we the human beings by one way or other way can apply different forces on one and the same object and hence make objects move with greater or less acceleration.

But earth is no doing like that. It is giving a force of 10 N for every kilogram of object.
Hence each kilogram has the same acceleration of 10m/s^2.


If the mass is 20kg, then the force is 20 N and hence the acceleration is 10m/s^2.
If the mass is 30kg, then the force is 30 N and hence the acceleration is 10m/s^2.
We can repeat like this and find that acceleration is always a constant.

Answer 3

wow... first of all gravitational force is not exerting more pull on the heaver object, because the g-force is a constant applying the same amount of force to all mass(but the mass its self has a g-force witch it exerts on all mass around it but it is such a small factor that u should not worry about it). so things fall at the same speed the only thing that gets in the way are things that get in the way like air particles. remove the air and a feather will fall at the same speed as a lead block(pretty cool ). hope this is helpful if not add some more info telling us what you don't understand.

Answer 4

I could paraphase a thing but it is below and written well. Suffice to say that gravity affects all things the same when looking at your example. As for why beyond the why beyond the why, it is still a hotly debated theory in which unproven gravitons play a role it is thought, but...
A rock falls faster than a feather for wind resistance, but a lead ball and rock fall the same because wind plays no role, and it is because of the equations below, and in the end? Gravitons? Dents in the space time? Sounds like a path to study for a PHD.

Answer 5

Force = mg is correct.

But what is g? g is the acceleration due to gravity. In other words, Force = Mass X Acceleration.

So, acceleration = Force / Mass = mg/m = g which is the acceleration due to gravity and m gets cancelled out.

Thus you can see that acceleration due to gravity is independent of mass.

Answer 6

for bigger m, mg ,the force of gravity is also bigger the effect of this bigger force on a bigger mass is to produce acceleration which does notdepend on the mass.