Falling Objects Let’s start with what happens to an object as it falls. In the third century BC, Aristotle asserted that a massive object will fall faster than a low-mass one. Sounds reasonable ...

Aristotle Was Wrong—Very Wrong—But People Still Love Him Centuries-old ideas about force and motion have an intuitive appeal that is enduring but oh-so-incorrect, as these simple experiments show.

Aristotle's Ideas About Falling Objects Aristotle said that there are 4 elements: Earth, Wind, Water, Fire.

Is this true? Some 1,800 years later, in late 16th-century Italy, the young scientist and mathematician Galileo Galilei questioned Aristotle's theories of falling objects.

Unlike the fly debacle, the falling objects are understandable. Aristotle believed that things fell at a constant speed, not accelerating, and that lighter objects fell more slowly than heavier ones.

Strato of Lampsacus defied assumptions by testing air pressure and motion, nearly 2,000 years before Galileo revolutionized physics.