An Acoustic Demonstration of Galileo's Law of Falling Bodies

TL;DR

This paper introduces an acoustic method to measure the fall time of a ball from various heights, demonstrating that acoustic signals can accurately verify Galileo's law of falling bodies with high precision.

Contribution

It presents a novel acoustic approach for analyzing falling times, providing a simple and accurate experimental verification of Galileo's law.

Findings

Measured fall times agree with theoretical predictions within 4.3 ms

Acoustic signals effectively capture the timing of falling objects

Method is suitable for educational demonstrations of physics principles

Abstract

An acoustic method is presented for analyzing the time of falling motion. A ball is dropped from a measured height. The dropping device makes a distinct sound a well-determined time (roughly 14 milliseconds) after release. The ball subsequently makes a second distinct sound when it hits the surface below. These sounds are captured with a microphone resting on the surface and are readily apparent in the acoustic waveform. At each height (0.25m, 0.50m, 0.75m, and 1.00m), the measured drop time agrees with the drop time predicted by the law of falling bodies with a typical accuracy of 4.3 ms.