It was a children versus grown-ups competition at school. One event required the adult to throw a basketball as far as he could. When it was the child's turn, he had to throw a baseball instead. The event coordinator said, "It's only fair!" Based on Newton's laws, was this event fair?

Yes, because an adult can apply more force than a child can. Making the adult's object bigger than the child's object helps to even out the acceleration.

No, because a basketball is bigger than a baseball, and objects that are bigger accelerate slower.

Yes, because acceleration doesn't depend on the size of the object.

No, because you must have the same size object in a competition.

We need to explain this a little, because even though acceleration depends on the mass of the object (not the size), size might increase fairness, according to Newton's second law:

"The magnitude of an object's acceleration is proportional to the net force and inversely proportional to the mass of the object."

So, the greater the mass, the smaller the acceleration, but size[tex]\neq[/tex]mass.

The fairness would come from the size of the object being affected by drag on the air, where the surface area would act as a negative force to the direction of the throw, thus the distance of the throw.