Re: OT: Speed of light [was Re: Why not a Python compiler?]

Erik Max Francis wrote:
Jeff Schwab wrote:

Erik Max Francis wrote:
Robert Bossy wrote:
I'm pretty sure we can still hear educated people say that free fall speed depends on the weight of the object without realizing it's a double mistake.

Well, you have to qualify it better than this, because what you've stated in actually correct ... in a viscous fluid.

By definition, that's not free fall.

In a technical physics context. But he's talking about posing the question to generally educated people, not physicists (since physicists wouldn't make that error). In popular parlance, "free fall" just means falling freely without restraint (hence "free fall rides," "free falling," etc.). And in that context, in the Earth's atmosphere, you _will_ reach a terminal speed that is dependent on your mass (among other things).

So you made precisely my point: The average person would not follow that the question was being asked was about an abstract (for people stuck on the surface of the Earth) physics principle, but rather would understand the question to be in a context where the supposedly-wrong statement is _actually true_.

So what's the "double mistake?" My understanding was (1) the misuse (ok, vernacular use) of the term "free fall," and (2) the association of weight with free-fall velocity ("If I tie an elephant's tail to a mouse's, and drop them both into free fall, will the mouse slow the elephant down?")
.