Does Height Or Weight Matter?

Classical Mechanics Level 1

You throw a bowling ball and a tennis ball in the air. The bowling ball only goes up 2 feet in the air, while the tennis ball goes up 10 feet. Assuming no air resistance, which object has the greatest acceleration while in the air?

Bowling ball Tennis ball Neither, they have the same acceleration

Anthony Ling by Anthony Ling , 24, USA

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3 solutions

Anthony Ling
May 9, 2016

Relevant wiki: Displacement, Velocity, Acceleration Word Problems

Both of the balls have the same acceleration. This is because the only force acting upon them is the force of gravity (which is 9.8 m s 2 \frac{m}{s^{2}} times the mass). Due to Newton's Second Law, the acceleration of both of the objects is 9.8 m s 2 \frac{m}{s^{2}} .

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As we all know acceleration is change in velocity which is due to force acting against its motion in our case. But as both are having different mass how it is supposed to have same resisting force?? (F=mg)

Jeet Patel - 5 years, 1 month ago

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I assume that when you're mentioning resisting force, you are talking about air resistance. In this problem, air resistance is negligible. It would be true, however, that the air resistance on these two different masses would have caused their accelerations to differ.

Anthony Ling - 5 years, 1 month ago
Marcus Leong
May 23, 2016

This question have a problem,it says [assuming no air resistance],so when there is no air resistance, means it's vacuum because there is no matter in air, so how can both the ball have difference in height, when the magnitude of force and gravitational acceleration is constant ?

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There is a difference in heights because when tossing the balls, the acceleration on the tennis ball is greater than the acceleration on the bowling ball (assuming that the force on the tennis ball is stronger or equal (if equal, we have to also assume that the tennis ball is lighter than the bowling ball)). Since the only force acting on the balls is gravity and gravity is constant, the tennis ball naturally goes higher than the bowling ball.

Anthony Ling - 5 years ago

Since both balls have same acceleration due to gravity, the only cause for difference in their maximum heights can be that the balls have different initial speeds.

Pranshu Gaba - 5 years ago
Lance Fernando
May 22, 2016

According to Galileo Galilei, two objects will fall at the same time provided that each of them had air resistance and solid on the inside.

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