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The bowling ball isn’t falling to the earth faster. The higher perceived acceleration is due to the earth falling toward the bowling ball.
this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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So obviously I ended up in the middle of this bell curve. How would that cause the perception of the ball's acceleration to differ?
When the earth pulls on an object with some F newtons of force, the object is also pulling on the earth with the same force. It’s just that the earth is so massive that its acceleration F/m will be tiny. Tiny is not zero though, so the earth is still accelerating toward the object. The heavier the object, the faster earth accelerates toward it.
Both the bowling ball and the feather accelerates toward earth at the same g=9.81m/s^2, but the earth accelerates toward the bowling ball faster than it does toward the feather.
But the question is which one falls faster, not which one pulls the earth faster.
Middle it is!
Both accelerate at the same speed, but the bowling ball completes it's fall first because the Earth was pulled up to meet it. The bowling ball falls faster not because it's moving faster, but because it's fall is shorter.
Unless they’re being let go at the same time at the same place, so the pull difference makes the minuscule difference even more minuscule.