Originally Posted by
Febs
One of our physicists can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that this is incorrect. Weight is a measure of the amount of force that gravity exerts on a body. If you carry an open umbrella, you are applying another force which is acting on the mass of your body in a direction different from the force of gravity, and therefore changing the net force impacting your acceleration and your velocity, but your weight (i.e., the force exerted on your body by gravity) is not changing.
I think you're overthinking this now. If I put on a jacket, I certainly weigh more than without it. If I unzip it and use it as a "parachute" like object to increase my air resistance and slow me down while falling out of an airplane or rolling downhill on my bike, this does not make me weigh any less (by any commonly accepted concept of the word "weight"). I go slower, but I weigh more, than I would without that weight on my body. That's all I was saying: that adding weight in a way that increases air resistance will not result in a faster fall - and therefore, if we want to be totally accurate, we can not hold that falling speed is dependent on weight, (since it is not always so).