> I think it would be easier to convince people with no physics knowledge that a bowling ball falls faster than a golf ball. Intuitively, it seems that bowling ball should fall faster.
Do you have any reason to believe that their intuition is wrong? If the bowling ball and golf ball were both spheres, so they differed only in size and mass, the bowling ball would have a higher terminal velocity. The golf ball's dimples reduce its air resistance, and I have no idea how to calculate if they reduce it enough to let it have the same terminal velocity as the bowling ball.
Perhaps I should have used a different example, but the main point was that Galileo's supposed Leaning Tower experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo's_Leaning_Tower_of_Pisa...) is counter intuitive and it's harder to convince laypeople of counter intuitive ideas especially when the "competing" idea is more intuitive.
Do you have any reason to believe that their intuition is wrong? If the bowling ball and golf ball were both spheres, so they differed only in size and mass, the bowling ball would have a higher terminal velocity. The golf ball's dimples reduce its air resistance, and I have no idea how to calculate if they reduce it enough to let it have the same terminal velocity as the bowling ball.