Happy anniversary! Today marks year number 16 since you first became a Sifter and the community is better for having you. Thanks for your contributions!

Happy anniversary! Today marks year number 15 since you first became a Sifter and the community is better for having you. Thanks for your contributions!

Happy anniversary! Today marks year number 14 since you first became a Sifter and the community is better for having you. Thanks for your contributions!

Happy anniversary! Today marks year number 13 since you first became a Sifter and the community is better for having you. Thanks for your contributions!

Happy anniversary! Today marks year number 12 since you first became a Sifter and the community is better for having you. Thanks for your contributions!

Happy anniversary! Today marks year number 11 since you first became a Sifter and the community is better for having you. Thanks for your contributions!

Tempus Fugit...

Happy anniversary! Today marks year number 10 since you first became a Sifter and the community is better for having you. Thanks for your contributions!

Batman?

Happy anniversary! Today marks year number 9 since you first became a Sifter and the community is better for having you. Thanks for your contributions!

Happy anniversary! Today marks year number 8 since you first became a Sifter and the community is better for having you. Thanks for your contributions!

You've ignored the fact that they did it inside, so there's also the pull of the bowling ball on the walls and ceiling, and vice versa! ;-)

I'm pretty sure we agree on all counts except how detailed one must be when teaching simple lessons.

It's not falsifying details. It's nonsensical to pose the problem so that surface irregularities are taken into consideration. Or the fact like in this video the feather started below the bowling ball.

It's a trivial 3-body problem. You can represent them by three balls, one of mass Heavy, one of mass Medium, one of mass Light. As long as Medium and Light start at the same distance from Heavy, Medium and Heavy will always hit first. You can run this test in an orbital simulator if you don't believe me.

Oh...so it's OK with you to simplify and 'falsify details' significantly by modeling the earth as a perfect sphere, but not ignore the mathematically insignificant and immeasurably small possible movement of the earth in some direction or another due to multiple immeasurably small gravities?! WHAT?!? ;-)

....Um...1 degree on earth is 111.2 KM, there's such a tiny difference (1 cm+-) they are in the same place for all possible measureable purposes, nothing like 1 deg apart. My scientific calculator won't give an answer, 1 deg * (1cm/111.2km) =0.00deg on it. (OK, it's not hard math...1/11120000 deg.) Because of this, yes, they WOULD cross the imaginary line, AND hit the earth at the same time by any possible measurement. If the smallest distance measureable is FAR larger than the distance they differ by, and the smallest time measureable is MUCH longer than the difference in time they hit, normal (and most abnormal) people say it's exactly the same.

And again...the experiment properly ignores any infinitely tiny immeasurable movement of the earth in ANY random direction for the obvious reasons already stated. There's far more difference based on the precise position of mercury than the position of the bowling ball and feather, especially when they are nearly touching...You know and understand this.

There's no such thing as acceleration of just the ball. Everything is relative; there are no fixed bodies. We just ignore the movement of the earth in these things, because as far as approximations go, it makes no practical difference.

They would not cross an imaginary line at the same time, since if the earth is modelled as a perfect sphere, it will be pulled slightly toward the bowling ball (the actual vector being somewhere between them because the feather has a small moment). If there's a 1 degree difference in the drop between the feather and ball, which looks about right for this experiment, this will result in a 1.7% advantage for the bowling ball hitting the earth first from the very slight movement of the earth.