Which lands first?

From the house

• A ball and a shoe
• A spoon and a wooden block
• Two sheets of paper
• A tray or bare floor to land on

How to play

1. Hold the ball and the shoe at the same height and ask: “Which will land first, the heavy one or the light one?”
2. Drop them at exactly the same moment and listen: one bang or two?
3. Try more pairs, like the spoon and the block. Heavy and light things land together.
4. Now drop a flat sheet of paper and a crumpled one: the flat one drifts down slowly because the air pushes against it.

Fit it to your child

• Easier: Drop one thing at a time and say “down”: gravity always pulls it down, never up.
• Harder: Tell them that an astronaut on the Moon, where there’s no air, dropped a hammer and a feather, and they landed together.

Words to use

• gravity
• drop
• fall
• heavy
• light
• together

Why it helps

Testing their own guess shows that gravity pulls heavy and light things down at the same speed, unless air gets in the way.