Galileo was technically WRONG

RJBeery said:
I'm not meaning to dodge anything. Perhaps you don't recognize or appreciate my answers.

1) The statement is TECHNICALLY WRONG. If you don't agree then you don't know what TECHNICALLY means. That word has a specific, technical :) meaning in this context.
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I understand your usage of the word technically in the context of this discussion. One of points is that in order to be technically wrong on the matter he first needs to have said something on the matter. How can he have been technically wrong if he never made the claim you're attributing to him in the first place? You claim that this whole discussion is pedantic and technical, and yet when I point out a pedantic technicality in your argument - that Galilelo never made the claim you're attributing to him in the first place you claim it's inane rather than addressing it.

RJBeery said:
2) The result between feathers and bowling balls may be indiscernible but that's a practical matter. There is obviously a point where the mass of the falling object does matter.
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At which point you use different mass because, the pedantic technicality is that as soon as you have to consider the earth falling towards another object as that object falls towards the earth, you're no longer describing a uniform gravitational field, you are instead considering a gravitational field with at least one kink in it.

RJBeery said:
3) Again, you are using the word "realistically" like it falls under the context of something being "technically right or wrong". Two different worlds.
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There's a deeper point buried in that statement relating to precision and uncertainty which means that because of quantum mechanics your claim that the earth moves may be technically wrong.

RJBeery said:
This will be the third time I post this. Please read it.
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I have read and understood it each time.
 
Fednis48 said:
It sounds to me like you're saying "the golf ball is obviously part of the Earth because it came from the Earth, but the asteroid is not because it came from space." Do you really think that the time it takes for an object to fall from a given height depends on whether that object was originally brought up from the ground or brought down from space?
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RJBeery drops the test-objects one at a time, and then compares the measurements. If the bowling ball is on the earth when the golf ball is dropped, then the mass of the bowling ball should be added to the mass of the earth in the calculation. I know this makes only a miniscule difference, but it is technically true, and something that RPenner used to argue against RJBeery's conclusions. However, if an object of one solar mass magically appears 10m above the earth, and is dropped, we have to make that object magically disappear before the next calculation. Otherwise our earth becomes way too massive. I assumed we were talking about magically appearing and disappearing objects all along, but now there seems to be a distinction. What a mess this thread...
 
Motor Daddy said:
If the chain is 4.9 meters long what makes you think the brick wall traveled any different distance than 4.9 meters until it hit the earth?
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The brick wall didn't travel anywhere. It's magical. We've already been over this. Plus, the brick wall doesn't even show up in the OP. I'm not sure what you're even talking about MD. Obviously, if the fall distance from the objects to the Earth was 10 meters then the total distance covered was 10 meters, but the object did not travel 10 meters; some of the distance was traveled by the Earth.
 
Trippy said:
I understand your usage of the word technically in the context of this discussion. One of points is that in order to be technically wrong on the matter he first needs to have said something on the matter. How can he have been technically wrong if he never made the claim you're attributing to him in the first place? You claim that this whole discussion is pedantic and technical, and yet when I point out a pedantic technicality in your argument - that Galilelo never made the claim you're attributing to him in the first place you claim it's inane rather than addressing it.
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OK, what statement should we be discussing?
 
RJBeery said:
The brick wall didn't travel anywhere. It's magical. We've already been over this. Plus, the brick wall doesn't even show up in the OP. I'm not sure what you're even talking about MD. Obviously, if the fall distance from the objects to the Earth was 10 meters then the total distance covered was 10 meters, but the object did not travel 10 meters; some of the distance was traveled by the Earth.
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So you're saying if I drop an object from 10 meters above the surface that it actually travels less than 10 meters until impact?
 
Neddy Bate said:
RJBeery drops the test-objects one at a time, and then compares the measurements. If the bowling ball is on the earth when the golf ball is dropped, then the mass of the bowling ball should be added to the mass of the earth in the calculation. I know this makes only a miniscule difference, but it is technically true, and something that RPenner used to argue against RJBeery's conclusions. However, if an object of one solar mass magically appears 10m above the earth, and is dropped, we have to make that object magically disappear before the next calculation. Otherwise our earth becomes way too massive. I assumed we were talking about magically appearing and disappearing objects all along, but now there seems to be a distinction. What a mess this thread...
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Actually, Neddy Bate, I think this thread is brilliant. We've watched people like exchemist go from a denier to a doubter to a believer. We have good discussions going and I personally learned something new myself. Yes, that means that we have to suffer some other folks who are digging their heels in, but Sturgeon's Law is the reality when dealing with the Internet...
 
Motor Daddy said:
So you're saying if I drop an object from 10 meters above the surface that it actually travels less than 10 meters until impact?
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Yes, Motor Daddy, that's the point which has been repeated in this thread at least two-dozen times. Congrats on catching up!
 
RJBeery said:
Yes, Motor Daddy, that's the point which has been repeated in this thread at least two-dozen times. Congrats on catching up!
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So I guess you're also saying that if I drop an object from 4.9 meters above the surface that it actually travels less than 4.9 meters until impact?
 
Motor Daddy said:
So I guess you're also saying that if I drop an object from 4.9 meters above the surface that it actually travels less than 4.9 meters until impact?
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Yes. Newton's Third Law doesn't "kick in" at some special mass threshold; it always applies, down to the smallest possible mass interacting with the largest conceivable one. If you can appreciate that the moon exerts a force on the Earth then you can appreciate that the bowling ball does as well.
 
RJBeery said:
Yes. Newton's Third Law doesn't "kick in" at some special mass threshold; it always applies, down to the smallest possible mass interacting with the largest conceivable one. If you can appreciate that the moon exerts a force on the Earth then you can appreciate that the bowling ball does as well.
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But your watch read 1 second, right? Or did that do something funny too?
 
Motor Daddy said:
But your watch read 1 second, right? Or did that do something funny too?
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Yes, a watch of sufficient accuracy would calculate the difference between the time it takes a bowling ball accelerating at 9.8 m/s^2 to travel 10 meters versus that same bowling ball traveling slightly less than 10 meters. That actual time differential is IRRELEVANT, as long as we recognize that it is theoretically there; this explains all of the references to being "technical and pedantic" in my posts.
 
RJBeery said:
OK, what statement should we be discussing?
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I've already elaborated upon what I understand Galileo's statement to be - that two different masses will fall at the same rate [of acceleration]. The debate was, in essence (at least if I understand it), that if we drop two test masses of different composition down a bottomless well, which one accelerates faster? They're considering masses being accelerated 'down' a uniform gravitational field of infinite length, and you've already agreed that under those conditions the technicaly corect answer is neither.
 
billvon said:
Don't get sucked into MotorDaddy's crazy! He loves it when people argue with him, and will say the dumbest things to get you to respond to him.
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He does that without prompting. What's the difference?
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Trippy said:
I've already elaborated upon what I understand Galileo's statement to be - that two different masses will fall at the same rate [of acceleration]. The debate was, in essence (at least if I understand it), that if we drop two test masses of different composition down a bottomless well, which one accelerates faster? They're considering masses being accelerated 'down' a uniform gravitational field of infinite length, and you've already agreed that under those conditions the technicaly corect answer is neither.
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Then we are in agreement. The acceleration is the same, but the fall times may differ. As for what Galileo the man actually said, I don't know, I was addressing what many people (obviously!!) felt was a consequence of (what may or may not have been) his experiments.
 
RJBeery said:
Then we are in agreement. The acceleration is the same, but the fall times may differ. As for what Galileo the man actually said, I don't know, I was addressing what many people (obviously!!) felt was a consequence of (what may or may not have been) his experiments.
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Right, but that's a seperate issue from whether or not Galileo was technically right or wrong.

And as I've said a couple of times now, my understanding of the historical evidence is that the whole leaning tower of pisa thing was a concoction added at a later date by a biographer.
 
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