David Scott, the hammer and the feather


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Have a look at this:   

In your face, Aristotle....

 

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Excellent quality video for the time. Please, please, please, all you space fans, let us develop that cheap manner of gaining access to our solar system. I think President Trump has mentioned a trip to Mars. Let's go for it.

Peter 

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1 hour ago, merjet said:

Wow. Bash Aristotle because he couldn't fly to the moon and he didn't learn from Galileo. :o

Not at all.  Aristotle could have picked up a one pound rock and a five pound rock and dropped them from the same height at the the same time.  He would have seen them hit the deck at the same time.  And it could have been done in the Agora in front of witnesses.   Any ten year old did could have thought of this test and have done it.  Aristotle did neither.  Shame on Aristotle!   1. He did not test his assertion  and (worse) 2: He did not think he had to test it.

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4 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Not at all.  Aristotle could have picked up a one pound rock and a five pound rock and dropped them from the same height at the the same time.  ...  Shame on Aristotle!   

I see. Do you accept nothing as true, even from experts, until you have personally and rigorously verified it?

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2 hours ago, merjet said:

 

I see. Do you accept nothing as true, even from experts, until you have personally and rigorously verified it?

No. I go to a source I trust.  I have not the time or the resources to test everything personally. 

I wasn't on the Moon when Scott dropped the hammer and the feather but I believed what I saw  because I have personally dropped heavy and light things from the same height and the same time and I have seen them land together.  Aristotle could have done this too without ever leaving Athens.  But he didn't.   No only did he fail to test his conclusions but apparently he did not think he -had to- test his conclusions.  And that is one of the reasons that we had to wait another 1900 years before we got real physical science. 

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1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

I have personally dropped heavy and light things from the same height and the same time and I have seen them land together.  Aristotle could have done this too without ever leaving Athens.  

They don't always, like the first time in this video. What Aristotle said is not completely false.

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25 minutes ago, merjet said:

They don't always, like the first time in this video. What Aristotle said is not completely false.

I am aware that if one  considers either dense viscous media  or  light objects with large surface area  that dropping such items is not a free fall.  The frictional effects or air or water  cause the object to reach a terminal velocity rather quickly.  But Aristotle did not fully qualify his principles so in the generality they are false.  In a particular context  (viscous media,  large area of objects)  they hold (sort of).  Aristotle did not have the means of quantifying his laws so he could not have stated them correctly.  He also incorrectly concluded that objects in a vacuum would fall at infinite velocity.  That is one of the reasons he denied the existence of a vacuum.  

Unfortunately,  Aristotle's followers  took what he said as gospel (so to speak) and did not inquire into what conditions Aristotle's rules of motion held.

I suggest you read  On the Heavens  by Aristotle to see what he did say.  Also read: Aristotle: A physicists look by Carlo Rovelli who treats Aristotle in a very fair way, much more fairly than I have treated Mr. A. .   See:  http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/10964/4/Aristotele.pdf

Aristotle believed the elements (air, earth, fire, water)  sought after their proper place.  This lead Aristotle to conclude that metal (which is heavy and earth like) would strive to get to the center of the Earth of it could.  From this he concluded that metal boats could not stay afloat on water.  A century later, Archimedes discovered the correct principles of buoyancy which are still has good today as they were then.  Archimedes showed how metal ships could float. As a result,  Greek triremes were metal clad to reduce the need to pull the ships out of the water to scrape the rot and sea life off their hulls.  It made a big difference to Greek commerce. 

Aristotle lived in a world of friction.  He simply did not experience anything that suggested inertia.  So he cannot be faulted for what he could not have experienced.  If only Greece were cold enough to permit ice hockey in the winter.  Aristotle, who was very smart, might have got some notion of inertia.  But that is not how it was 

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2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

No. I go to a source I trust.  I have not the time or the resources to test everything personally. 

I wasn't on the Moon when Scott dropped the hammer and the feather but I believed what I saw  because I have personally dropped heavy and light things from the same height and the same time and I have seen them land together.  Aristotle could have done this too without ever leaving Athens.  But he didn't.   No only did he fail to test his conclusions but apparently he did not think he -had to- test his conclusions.  And that is one of the reasons that we had to wait another 1900 years before we got real physical science. 

Galileo's experiment was highly sophisticated for the lack of a vacuum meant he couldn't merely drop a hammer and a feather.

--Brant

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2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Galileo's experiment was highly sophisticated for the lack of a vacuum meant he couldn't merely drop a hammer and a feather.

--Brant

Galileo,  clever fellow,  "slowed"  gravitation by using inclined planes.  he noticed that balls of varying mass took the same time to roll down the plane and he timed them at varying marks on the plane to show they accelerated the same.  So the acceleration of a rolling (or falling)  body is the same for all masses. 

Galileo carefully machined his inclined planes to minimize friction, so the retarding force of friction between the rolling balls and the planes were reduced to the point of being negligible.  He then extrapolated inductively to conclude that falling bodies of varying mass would fall the same way if air friction was removed. Later experimenters who could evacuate glass cylinders thoroughly showed that feathers and lead pellets fall at the same rate in a vacuum.   Scott's demonstration was a dramatic way of demonstrating the same effect.   Nature provided a better vacuum than just about any vacuum pump. 

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In your face Aristotle,  part 2.  We don't have to go to Moon. 

 

 

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13 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

In your face Aristotle,  part 2.  We don't have to go to Moon. [video]

I hope you are getting your jollies. That video differs little from the one I posted 19 hours ago. :wacko:

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13 minutes ago, merjet said:

I hope you are getting your jollies. That video differs little from the one I posted 19 hours ago. :wacko:

Did you catch paraphrasing Einstein saying neither bodies were falling?

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15 minutes ago, merjet said:

I hope you are getting your jollies. That video differs little from the one I posted 19 hours ago. :wacko:

Missed the link. Sorry about that.

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