"Happiness: a freshly fallen shroud of snow, a brisk polar gale. the scintillations of pristine ice crystallizing on a cooling lake, all the majesty of winter...coming soon to the Southern Hemisphere. ha ha!"
THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
My first reaction was abject horror and profound shame. Remember those moments as a child when, let's say, you were playing left field in a baseball game and while you wondered if the dryads in the nearby forest ever assumed their natural form without moonlight, the ball landed an inch in front of you and as you stood oblivious to it, the opposing team drove in three runs and won the game that you're team would have won had the ball well, been moved from its landing site. And, then, when the banshee shouts of about three billions of Earth's inhabitants awakened you from your reverie, you found yourself in the focal point of wrath powerful enough to flip over Madagascar?
Well, I experienced a similar feeling yesterday as I assumed the fifteen responses were reproaches for posting a bullet question so soon after that despicable event in Orlando* But, no. Instead, some subscribers were disputing the answer and offering their own.
The problem with the question pertains to something that was left out. If a bullet is dropped from the same height as a bullet that is fired HORIZONTALLY from a gun, they will land at the same time. I neglected to include that small, but immensely important, qualification. If a bullet is fired up an at angle, it will land after the dropped bullet. Conversely, if a bullet is fired down at an angle, it will land before the dropped bullet.
Also, someone told me that they would have answered the question differently, because the question also assumes that the bullet is fired on a flat Earth. The times would not be equal on an planet where the acceleration is radial. This statement is quite true and insightful.
Someone else did remark that I did likely intend to say the gun was fired horizontally, but added that holding anything horizontal is almost impossible. In this messy, non linear world, it would invariably be held at a slight angle.
However, if we can pretend that we live in a physics text book where everything can be situated for our convenience, a bullet fired horizontally would strike the ground at the same time as a bullet dropped from the same height at the same moment because the downward pull of gravity is acting equally on both bullets. The fired bullet would travel farther horizontally, of course, but the two objects fall from the same height and descend at the same rate.
I hope this talk has help clarify matters. I apologize for my tendency to omit important details. And, I also apologize for not writing an article today. The weather is becoming increasingly more gorgeous and I decided to be a lazy cad. I promise to be more responsible tomorrow.
*If anybody was offended, I do apologize. You see, I used to rely on the late Shadow Professor to advise me whenever I would wonder if an article should or shouldn't be posted. Now that he has moved on, I am left to my own devices, which are often faulty.
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FROM THE CATACOMBS OF INFINITE KNOWLEDGE