Galileo’s Free Fall Experiment
- Galileo initially believed in the Aristotelian view of motion, which stated that heavy objects fall faster than light ones because it is their nature to seek their natural place more quickly.
- As a math teacher at the University of Pisa, Galileo became interested in the rates of falls and proposed that a body’s speed should be proportional to its density.
- He conducted an experiment, likely at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, dropping different balls to test his hypothesis.
- Galileo observed that both balls reached nearly the same speed, with only a small difference due to air resistance, which contradicted Aristotelian ideas.
- He also noted that the lighter ball initially started a little faster than the heavy ball, which caught up later, challenging common beliefs.
- Though details of the experiment are not entirely reliable, if conducted, it marked a significant turning point in the history of science, leading Galileo to reject Aristotelian notions of motion.
Law of Inertia
Law of Inertia is another name for the First Law of Motion given by Sir Isaac Newton. As Law of Inertia has been studied by various scholars, throughout the centuries, and it helped humanity to understand the various concepts of motion in a wide range of fields from aerospace to automobile design.
The origins of the Law of Inertia can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and Galileo, who first posited the idea of “natural motion.” But until Sir Isaac Newton redefined the Law of Inertia as the “first law of motion” in the 17th century, it was not widely used by science scholars.
Their Law of Inertia is also called Newton’s First Law of Motion. In this article, we will dive deeper into the concept of the Law of Inertia and other related topics in good detail.
Table of Content
- Inertia Definition
- What is Law of Inertia?
- Galileo’s Free Fall Experiment
- Experiment on Inclined Plane
- Types of Inertia
- Law of Inertia Examples
- Limitations of Law of Inertia
- Sample Questions on Law of Inertia