Free Fall

A dropped ball doesn't settle into a steady speed because gravity never stops pulling on it. Gravity gives every falling object a constant acceleration near Earth's surface, g = 9.8 m/s², which means velocity increases by 9.8 m/s every second it falls. Acceleration being constant does not mean velocity is constant. As long as the force causing the acceleration keeps acting, and nothing cancels it, the speed keeps climbing.

Mass doesn't enter the picture. A bowling ball and a tennis ball released together hit the floor together because gravitational acceleration doesn't depend on mass: heavier objects feel a bigger pull of gravity, but that same mass also resists acceleration more, and the two effects cancel exactly. Both fall at g. The famous exception is air resistance, which pushes back harder on light, spread-out objects like a feather than on dense ones like a coin, making the feather lag. Strip the air away, as on the Moon, and a feather and a hammer fall together.

This topic is one dimensional kinematics applied to a single known acceleration, so the same three equations from position, velocity and acceleration graphs now take g in place of a general a. A ball tossed straight up decelerates at 9.8 m/s² the entire time, slowing, stopping for an instant at the top, then speeding up downward, symmetric going up and coming down. That symmetry, and the moment of zero velocity at the peak, sets up projectile motion next, where this vertical story runs independently alongside horizontal motion at constant velocity.