I find this perplexing. Obviously few of us would get to see a feather drop due to the lack of a huge vacuum chamber, but you can derive almost as much experimental entertainment by dropping, say, a ping-pong ball and a similarly sized marble or ball bearing.
Really, I think the slow-motion camera has much more educational value than the vacuum chamber (cool as that is). When I was in school and we'd debate such things, I liked to do experiments but dropping things of different weight off the roof only takes you so far, as people might object that they hit the ground a fraction of a second apart but too little of an interval to notice given the relatively low height etc. If I was doing it now I'd just use my camera to tighten things up, and although it's slo-mo capabilities are limited several current consumer models deliver that functionality at affordable prices.
One of my science teachers demonstrated it in class with a vacuum glass tube containing a small feather and a small lead weight. I remember being equally amazed to see it. As pointed out, there is a difference between being told something and seeing it.
The demonstration that air resistance is the cause of the difference in fall duration is what you gain from this. You don't get to remove air resistance from the equation in any other way. It's easy for an ignorant person to assume there's no way air, something we "feel" no resistance from in our daily lives, would be able to fight the force of gravity to such a degree. This experiment makes that concept clear, where dropping a stick and a lead pipe from equal height would not.
Ping-pong ball was a thoughtless example, but many things of different weights will be Good Enough for the junior experimenter, eg plastic ans steel pipe sections dropped straight downwards.
I demonstrated it to my son this morning by filling up one of two boots with coins and demonstrating both boots still fell at the same speed despite the weight difference.
Really, I think the slow-motion camera has much more educational value than the vacuum chamber (cool as that is). When I was in school and we'd debate such things, I liked to do experiments but dropping things of different weight off the roof only takes you so far, as people might object that they hit the ground a fraction of a second apart but too little of an interval to notice given the relatively low height etc. If I was doing it now I'd just use my camera to tighten things up, and although it's slo-mo capabilities are limited several current consumer models deliver that functionality at affordable prices.