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Free fall. In Newtonian physics, free fall is any motion of a body where gravity 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. An object in the technical sense of the term "free fall" may not necessarily be falling ...
In 1551, Domingo de Soto suggested that objects in free fall accelerate uniformly. Two years later, mathematician Giambattista Benedetti questioned why two balls, one made of iron and one of wood, would fall at the same speed. All of this preceded the 1564 birth of Galileo Galilei. Delft tower experiment
t. e. The equivalence principle is the hypothesis that the observed equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass is a consequence of nature. The weak form, known for centuries, relates to masses of any composition in free fall taking the same trajectories and landing at identical times. The extended form by Albert Einstein requires special ...
Only Einstein's theory proved to be consistent with experiments and observations. To understand the theory's basic ideas, it is instructive to follow Einstein's thinking between 1907 and 1915, from his simple thought experiment involving an observer in free fall to his fully geometric theory of gravity. Equivalence principle
Italians of the 16th century found that objects in free fall tend to accelerate equally. In 1632, Galileo Galilei put forth the basic principle of relativity . The existence of the gravitational constant was explored by various researchers from the mid-17th century, helping Isaac Newton formulate his law of universal gravitation.
Einstein later refined his thought experiment to consider a man inside a large enclosed chest or elevator falling freely in space. While in free fall, the man would consider himself weightless, and any loose objects that he emptied from his pockets would float alongside him. Then Einstein imagined a rope attached to the roof of the chamber.
In this theory, free fall is considered to be equivalent to inertial motion, meaning that free-falling inertial objects are accelerated relative to non-inertial observers on the ground. [34] [35] In contrast to Newtonian physics , Einstein believed that it was possible for this acceleration to occur without any force being applied to the object.
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