ABSTRACT
Perhaps one of the most famous thought experiments of them all was also one of the simplest. It involved the celebrated astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) climbing the leaning tower of Pisa, leaning over the parapet and dropping two balls, a large heavy one and a smaller lighter one, and watching to see which hit the ground first. Galileo was thinking of one of Aristotle’s laws, to whit:
So, will a big rock fall faster than a small one, and if so, how great will be the difference?
