Free Fall

The motion of falling objects is the simplest and most common example of
motion with changing velocity. If a coin and a piece of paper are
simultaneously dropped side by side, the paper takes much longer to hit the
ground. However, if you crumple the paper into a compact ball and drop the
items again, it will look like both the coin and the paper hit the floor
simultaneously. This is because the amount of force acting on an object is a
function of not only its mass, but also area. Free fall is the motion of a body
where its weight is the only force acting on an object (illustrated in ).

Free Fall
This clip shows an object in free fall.
Galileo also observed this phenomena and realized that it disagreed with the
Aristotle principle that heavier items fall more quickly. Galileo then
hypothesized that there is an upward force exerted by air in addition to the
downward force of gravity. If air resistance and friction are negligible, then in a
given location (because gravity changes with location), all objects fall toward
the center of Earth with the same constant acceleration, independent of their mass,
that constant acceleration is gravity. Air resistance opposes the motion of an
object through the air, while friction opposes motion between objects and
the medium through which they are traveling. The acceleration of free-falling
objects is referred to as the acceleration due to gravity g. As we said earlier,
gravity varies depending on location and altitude on Earth (or any other
planet), but the average acceleration due to gravity on Earth is 9.8 m/s
2.
This
value is also often expressed as a negative acceleration in mathematical
calculations due to the downward direction of gravity.
Equations
The best way to see the basic features of motion involving gravity is to start by
considering straight up and down motion with no air resistance or friction.
This means that if the object is dropped, we know the initial velocity is zero.
Once the object is in motion, the object is in free-fall. Under these
circumstances, the motion is one-dimensional and has constant acceleration,
g. The kinematicequations for objects experiencing free fall are:
where v = velocity, g = gravity, t = time and y = vertical displacement.

Examples
Some examples of objects that are in free fall include:
A spacecraft in continuous orbit. The free fall would end once
the propulsiondevices turned on.
An stone dropped down an empty well.
An object, in projectile motion, on its descent.


A freely falling object is an object that moves under the influence of gravity only.
Neglecting air resistance, all objects in free fall in the earth's gravitational field have a
constant acceleration that is directed towards the earth's center, or perpendicular to the
earth's surface, and of magnitude | | g = 9.8 m/s
2
. If motion is straight up and
down and we choose a coordinate system with the positive y-axis pointing up and
perpendicular to the earth's surface, we describe the motion with Eq.(2.7), Eq.(2.8),
Eq.(2.9) with a - g , x y .

Equations of Motion for the 1-d vertical motion of an object in free fall:
v = v
0
- gt
y = v
0
t - gt
2

v
2
= v
0
2
- 2gy
Note: Since the acceleration due to gravity is the same for any object, a heavy object
does not fall faster than a light object.
A free falling object is an object that is falling under the sole influence of gravity. Any
object that is being acted upon only by the force of gravity is said to be in a state
of free fall. There are two important motion characteristics that are true of free-falling
objects:
Free-falling objects do not encounter air resistance.
All free-falling objects (on Earth) accelerate downwards at a rate of 9.8 m/s/s (often
approximated as 10 m/s/s for back-of-the-envelope calculations)
Because free-falling objects are accelerating downwards at a rate of 9.8
m/s/s, a ticker tape trace or dot diagram of its motion would depict an
acceleration. The dot diagram at the right depicts the acceleration of a
free-falling object. The position of the object at regular time intervals -
say, every 0.1 second - is shown. The fact that the distance that the
object travels every interval of time is increasing is a sure sign that the
ball is speeding up as it falls downward. Recall from an earlier lesson, that
if an object travels downward and speeds up, then its acceleration is
downward.
Free-fall acceleration is often witnessed in a physics classroom by means
of an ever-popular strobe light demonstration. The room is darkened and
a jug full of water is connected by a tube to a medicine dropper. The
dropper drips water and the strobe illuminates the falling droplets at a
regular rate - say once every 0.2 seconds. Instead of seeing a stream of water free-
falling from the medicine dropper, several consecutive drops with increasing separation
distance are seen. The pattern of drops resembles the dot diagram shown in the
graphic at the right.


In Newtonian physics, free fall is any motion of a body where its weight is the only force acting upon
it. In the context of general relativity, where gravitation is reduced to a space-time curvature, a body
in free fall has no force acting on it and it moves along a geodesic. The present article only concerns
itself with free fall in the Newtonian domain.
An object in the technical sense of free fall may not necessarily be falling down in the usual sense of
the term. An object moving upwards would not normally be considered to be falling, but if it is subject
to the force of gravity only, it is said to be in free fall. The moon is thus in free fall.
In a uniform gravitational field, in the absence of any other forces, gravitation acts on each part of
the body equally and this is akin to weightlessness, a condition that also occurs when the
gravitational field is zero (such as when far away from any gravitating body). A body in free fall
experiences "0-g".
The term "free fall" is often used more loosely than in the strict sense defined above. Thus, falling
through an atmospherewithout a deployed parachute, or lifting device, is also often referred to
as free fall. The aerodynamic drag forces in such situations prevent them from producing full
weightlessness, and thus a skydiver's "free fall" after reaching terminal velocityproduces the
sensation of the body's weight being supported on a cushion of air.

Examples[edit]
Examples of objects in free fall include:
A spacecraft (in space) with propulsion off (e.g. in a continuous orbit, or on a suborbital
trajectory (ballistics) going up for some minutes, and then down).
An object dropped at the top of a drop tube.
An object thrown upward or a person jumping off the ground at low speed (i.e. as long as air
resistance is negligible in comparison to weight).
Technically, an object is in free fall even when moving upwards or instantaneously at rest at the top
of its motion. If gravity is the only influence acting, then the acceleration is always downward and
has the same magnitude for all bodies, commonly denoted .
Since all objects fall at the same rate in the absence of other forces, objects and people will
experience weightlessness in these situations.
Examples of objects not in free fall:
Flying in an aircraft: there is also an additional force of lift.
Standing on the ground: the gravitational force is counteracted by the normal force from the
ground.
Descending to the Earth using a parachute, which balances the force of gravity with an
aerodynamic drag force (and with some parachutes, an additional lift force).
The example of a falling skydiver who has not yet deployed a parachute is not considered free fall
from a physics perspective, since he experiences a drag force that equals his weight once he has
achieved terminal velocity (see below). However, the term "free fall skydiving" is commonly used to
describe this case in everyday speech, and in the skydiving community. It is not clear, though,
whether the more recent sport of wingsuit flying fits under the definition of free fall skydiving.


Measured fall time of a small steel sphere falling from various heights. The data is in good agreement with the
predicted fall time of , where h is the height and g is the free-fall acceleration due to gravity.
Near the surface of the Earth, an object in free fall in a vacuum will accelerate at approximately
9.8 m/s, independent of its mass. With air resistance acting on an object that has been dropped, the
object will eventually reach a terminal velocity, which is around 56 m/s (200 km/h or 120 mph) for a
human body. The terminal velocity depends on many factors including mass, drag coefficient, and
relative surface area and will only be achieved if the fall is from sufficient altitude. A typical skydiver
in a spread-eagle position will reach terminal velocity after about 12 seconds, during which time he
will have fallen around 450 m (approx 1,500 ft).
[1]

Free fall was demonstrated on the moon by astronaut David Scott on August 2, 1971. He
simultaneously released a hammer and a feather from the same height above the moon's surface.
The hammer and the feather both fell at the same rate and hit the ground at the same time. This
demonstrated Galileo's discovery that, in the absence of air resistance, all objects experience the
same acceleration due to gravity. (On the Moon, the gravitational acceleration is much less than on
Earth, approximately 1.6 m/s).