Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life

by Ozan Varol

climbed to the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, dropped two objects of different weights, and chuckled in delight while calling Aristotle funny names when both objects hit the ground at the same time. Except he didn’t. This entire episode turned out to be a myth manufactured by Galileo’s earliest biographer. Most contemporary historians agree that Galileo instead conducted a thought experiment—not a physical one. He imagined a heavy cannonball and a light musket ball chained together to form a single, combined system to be dropped at the same time.9 If Aristotle were right, the attached system should fall faster than the heavy cannonball alone because the combination weighs more. But it would also mean the light musket ball in the attached system should fall slower than the heavy cannonball. In other words, if Aristotle’s theory is correct, the light musket ball should act as a drag on the combined system, causing it to fall slower than the heavy cannonball alone. Both statements can’t be true: The attached system can’t fall both faster and slower than the heavy cannonball on its own. The thought experiment reveals a contradiction in Aristotle’s theory and obliterates it.