Galileo and Falling Bodies

• Galileo Proposed that all freely falling bodies fall with the same acceleration independent of their mass
• Using mathematics he showed this leads to expression x = 1/2 g t2
  • Difficult to test in Galileo’s time
  • One of his brilliant ideas: Rolling on an incline is like “gravity slowed down”
  • But is this true? Does it really test the law that all bodies fall with the same acceleration?

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