Feathers in a Vacuum

You know from Galileo’s experiment that falling objects will fall at the same speed, no matter their weight. The experiment falls apart when you use feathers, however, because they waft down rather than fall, because of air resistance. But what if you took the air out of the equation?

The  world’s largest vacuum chamber is in Cleveland, Ohio. Physicist Brian Cox visited to show us what a falling feather looks like without any air resistance. The clip is from the BBC Two show Human Universe. (via Metafilter)