Question

If you drop a book and a sheet of paper, why does the book have greater acceleration? Explain.

Answer 1

Comparing a book and a paper, a book has got more mass than the paper.

In fact, both book and paper along with every single object has a fixed acceleration of 9.81m/s^2 ( check Galileo'' experiment of rock and feather from pisa tower).

The thing is that book falls faster than a paper because of the air resistance on the paper is much more than that on the book.

The air resistance is an upward force that opposes the force of gravity.

Hence the net downward force acting on the paper will be less than the downward force acting on the book.

This larger force acting on the book will cause the book to fall at higher speed than the paper.

It should be clearly noted that the acceleration will be always constant for any object irrespective of the mass.