PS I just realized you may have mistyped and meant the old “What is heavier 10 kg of straw or 10 kg of iron?” which ilustrates the point you try to make a bit better
No. I meant what I wrote. The thing with the straw and or feathers is just word play, a communication problem. I am talking about an actual misunderstanding of the nature of physics.
I have seen people (science teacher types) ask the question by holding out a rock and a scrunched up piece of paper and asking which will hit the ground first when dropped. There is no sophistry—the universe doesn’t do ‘trick questions’. Buoyancy, friction and drag are all obviously dwarfed here by experimental error. People get the answer wrong. They expect to see the rock hit the ground noticeably earlier. Even more significantly, they are surprised when they both fall about the same speed. In fact, sometimes they go as far as to accuse the demonstrator of playing some sort of trick and insist on performing the experiment themselves.
The same kind of intuitive (mis)understanding of gravity would lead people to also guess wrong about things like what would happen on the moon.
No. I meant what I wrote. The thing with the straw and or feathers is just word play, a communication problem. I am talking about an actual misunderstanding of the nature of physics.
I have seen people (science teacher types) ask the question by holding out a rock and a scrunched up piece of paper and asking which will hit the ground first when dropped. There is no sophistry—the universe doesn’t do ‘trick questions’. Buoyancy, friction and drag are all obviously dwarfed here by experimental error. People get the answer wrong. They expect to see the rock hit the ground noticeably earlier. Even more significantly, they are surprised when they both fall about the same speed. In fact, sometimes they go as far as to accuse the demonstrator of playing some sort of trick and insist on performing the experiment themselves.
The same kind of intuitive (mis)understanding of gravity would lead people to also guess wrong about things like what would happen on the moon.