Question

Take a large stone and a small eraser. Stand on the top of a table and drop them simultaneously from the same height?

What do you observe? Now, take a small eraser and a sheet of paper. Drop them simultaneously from the same height?

What do you observe? This time, take two sheets of paper having same mass and crumple one of the sheets into a ball. Now, drop the sheet and the ball from the same height. What do you observe?

Answer 1

Both the stone and the eraser have reached the surface of the Earth almost at the same time in the absence of air medium (vacuum). But in air medium, due to friction, air offers resistance to the motion of free falling objects. The eraser reaches the first, the sheet of paper reaches later. The air resistance exerted on the sheet of paper is much higher than that of the eraser. The paper crumpled into a ball reaches ground first and plain sheet of paper reaches later, although they have equal mass. The air resistance offer to the plain sheet of paper is much higher than that offered to the paper ball. This is because the magnitude of air resistance depends on the area of objects exposed to air