Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello! I am a student in Arizona and I would like help for my science fair. My topic is Incorporating physics into Video games. I am using game maker 8 to make a video game. The project will measure speed and mass of a ball to help determine variables. It will be a simulation with choose able options of mass of an object (in this case a ball). The ball could also be chosen to be dropped from different heights.

I am using the project from: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... background
My questions are:

Does a ball speed up on a constant slope?

Does a ball speed up when dropped from a really high distance?

I will ask more as they come up.

Bye!

A ball with greater mass than a smaller mass will fall faster, right?

Hello Hans0l012!

I might be misunderstanding your question, but from my understanding the answers to your questions would be yes and yes. Assuming that your simulation involves gravitational acceleration, all balls will speed up when falling. For more specific information on this, you might try Googling 'kinematic equations'.

Hope this helped, and be sure to ask if you have more questions!

Thank you Vysarge for replying! Your answers do answer me and the are really helpful.

A little clarification on what Vysarge said. Not only will all balls speed up when falling, but if we ignore the friction of air, all balls will speed up by the same amount -- that is despite differences in mass, the balls will all fall exactly the same way! This is a truly remarkable fact that has been known from the time of Galileo. It took centuries, until the work of Einstein in his theory of General Relativity, to explain the deep and subtle reason why this is so.

Also thanks to you, John Dreher for helping me!