Anatomy of a fall: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the story of g

摘要

Every physics student learns about falling bodies and g, the acceleration due to Earth's gravitational field. But few physicists learn the story of the first experiments-now more than three centuries old-to measure g. That story begins in earnest with the famed Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. In his 1632 tome, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo writes that seconds to reach the ground.~2 The ball seemed too heavy, and the time of fall too long, to be plausible. Plus, Galileo had provided few details about his experimental procedure.