OT: Speed of light [was Re: Why not a Python compiler?]

[Erik Max Francis]

Robert Bossy wrote:
> Grant Edwards wrote:
>> After repeated attempts at the tasks set for them in the
>> experiments, the subjects would learn strategies that would
>> work in a Newtonian world, but the initial intuitive reactions
>> were very non-Newtonian (regardless of how educated they were
>> in physics).
>
> I'm pretty sure we can still hear educated people say that free fall 
> speed depends on the weight of the object without realizing it's a 
> double mistake.

Well, you have to qualify it better than this, because what you've 
stated in actually correct ... in a viscous fluid.  Terminal speed is 
reached when the force due to gravity is equal and opposite to the drag 
force, and the drag force is dependent on the properties of the fluid, 
as well as the size and mass of the object that is falling through it.

It's only when you're dealing with objects falling through vacuum that 
all objects fall at the same rate, and that's because the gravitational 
and inertial masses are identical.

-- 
Erik Max Francis && max at alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
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