Question

Which object is accelerating downward at the slowest rate?

a pebble falling off a cliff through the air

a textbook falling onto the surface of the moon

a flower pot that has been pushed out a window

a baseball thrown from third base to first base

Answer 1

thoughts?

the problem asks for the slowest acceleration, so I would immediately eliminate the choices where an object receives an applied downward force in addition to gravity (a.k.a choices 3 and 4, which both describe objects receiving a downward push/throw, in addition to gravity)

that leaves us with choices 1 and 2, which describe objects in free-fall (falling only due to gravity and no external forces. for simplicity's sake, we will not consider air resistance here)

one is on the moon and the other is on earth. which one do you think has a smaller acceleration due to gravity? if in doubt, consider the gravitational acceleration constants of the moon vs. the earth.