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Experimentals: Do different things fall faster?

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Experimentals: Do different things fall faster?

SUBJECTS:  Science

YEARS:  7–8, 9–10


Want to find out what happens when you drop a watermelon and an apple from the top of a building?

In this clip, Bernie Hobbs and Ruben Meerman, investigate whether the mass of an object influences how fast it falls.

Bernie and Ruben ride the 'Giant Drop' at Dreamworld, drop a watermelon and apple from an eighth floor balcony, and 'visit' the Moon in their quest to discover what affects the fall of objects.


Things to think about

  1. 1.If a watermelon and an apple were dropped from a building which do you think would hit the ground first? Why? An object moves because there are forces acting upon it. What force causes things to fall to the ground? Do you know a type of force that might slow things down?
  2. 2.Watch as presenters, Bernie and Ruben, drop the watermelon and apple from the building. Which of these hits the ground first? What factor influenced the experiment and caused the results to be unreliable? When the hammer and feather were dropped on the moon, which of them hit the surface first? What reason was given for this result?
  3. 3.How well do you think the experiments showed the effect forces have on the movement of things? Explain or draw a diagram to show how objects fall and how forces are acting on them. You could use arrows to demonstrate the direction of a force.
  4. 4.Conduct your own experiments to test the rate at which objects fall. First try an A4 sheet of paper rolled into a ball and a flat sheet of A4 paper. What happens? Now try different objects such as a grape and an apple; a table tennis ball and tennis ball; a pencil and a glue stick. Record your results in a table.



Date of broadcast: 9 Apr 2005


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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