Parachutes!

We're looking at forces this term in Science. So far we have managed to identify the different types of forces that act upon objects on Earth. 

Today however we focussed on air resistance. And what better way to test air resistance than making parachutes?! 

The children carried out two different experiments. Does the material the parahute is made from affect air resistance and does the size and shape of the parachute affect air resistance?

We made parachutes of the same shape out of cloth, paper, card and a plastic bag. We then made sure that we dropped these from the same heights in order to make it a fair test. The results of the experiment showed us that there was very little to no difference between the different material parachutes. 

So we moved onto different shapes. The children chose their own shapes to create and tried to keep them to roughly the same size. They found that a triangular parachute was much less effective than a square or a circular parachute. 

We looked at the fact that the weight doesn't affect air resistance rather the size and the surface area and had a lot of fun finding this out!