Distance Covered in Uniform Acceleration

Galileo asserted that the result of the rolling-down-the-ramp experiment confirmed his claim that the acceleration was uniform. Let us now try to understand why this is so. The simplest way to do this is to put in some numbers. Let us assume, for argument’s sake, that the ramp is at a convenient slope such that, after rolling down it for one second, the ball is moving at two meters per second. This means that after two seconds it would be moving at four meters per second, after three seconds at six meters per second and so on until it hits the end of the ramp. (Note: to get an intuitive feel for these speeds, one meter per second is 3.6 km/hr, or 2.25 mph.)