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How Galileo Inferred That

Galileo used experiments with balls rolling down inclined planes to infer that objects in a vacuum fall with uniform acceleration. He observed that the speed of balls rolling down planes increased by a constant amount each second. When the plane was vertical, simulating a free fall, the acceleration was greatest. This led Galileo to conclude that all objects in a vacuum experience uniform acceleration during free fall, regardless of their mass.

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1K views13 pages

How Galileo Inferred That

Galileo used experiments with balls rolling down inclined planes to infer that objects in a vacuum fall with uniform acceleration. He observed that the speed of balls rolling down planes increased by a constant amount each second. When the plane was vertical, simulating a free fall, the acceleration was greatest. This led Galileo to conclude that all objects in a vacuum experience uniform acceleration during free fall, regardless of their mass.

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Yay Sandoval
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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February 23, 2017

How Galileo
Inferred That
Objects in
Vacuum Fall
with Uniform
Acceleration
OBJECTIVE:
At the end of the lesson, you will be able
to explain how Galileo inferred that
objects in vacuum fall with uniform
acceleration.
Recall that a body moving with
uniform acceleration changes its
speed by a constant value per unit of
time.
Imagine yourself holding a bowling
ball and a ping pong ball. If you
drop these balls simultaneously,
which ball do you think would have
greater acceleration upon reaching
the ground? Why?
Galileo proved with his experiments that when
objects are dropped simultaneously, they will
reach the ground at the same time regardless of
their masses and air resistance. In another set of
experiments, he discovered that objects fall with
uniform acceleration.
Galileo was fascinated by the behavior of falling
objects. He knew that falling objects increase
their speed as they go down. This change in
speed is acceleration. However, he did not have
any equipment to measure this change, so he
used inclined planes to lessen the acceleration of
the moving bodies. He was then able to
investigate the moving bodies carefully.
On his experiment, he had observed the
following:

A ball rolling down an inclined plane


increases its speed by the same value after every
second. For example, the speed of a rolling ball
was found to increase by 2 m/s every second.
This means that the rolling ball would have the
following speeds for every given second
 As the inclined plane becomes steeper, the
acceleration of the rolling ball increases.
The maximum acceleration of the rolling ball
was reached when the inclined plane was
positioned vertically as if the ball is simply
falling
These observations lead Galileo to conclude
that regardless of the mass of objects and air
resistance, falling objects would always have
uniform acceleration.
EXPLORE:
Given two one peso coins, released at
the same time, Coin A is dropped while
Coin B is thrown horizontally coming
from the same height. Which one do
you think would reach the ground first?
TRY IT:
If an object falls with an
acceleration of 5 m/s2 what would
be its speed after 3 s given its
starts at 0 m/s at 0s?
WHAT DO YOU THINK?

If a speedometer is attached to a
falling object and the reading increases
by 10 m/s every second, what is the
object’s acceleration?
KEY POINTS
A body with uniform acceleration changes its
speed by a constant value.
Galileo proved that when objects are released
simultaneously from a certain height, they
reach the ground at the same time, regardless
of their masses and air resistance.
Galileo discovered that all objects fall with the
uniform acceleration in vacuum.

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