Parachute Materials

Which Material Makes The Best Parachute?

Conclusion: After testing my parachutes I realized that if you use silk to make a parachute you will have a safe and quick way of getting to the ground.

Abstracte: My science fair project was, does the material of the parachute affect how fast it drops? That means that I will use five different material to see which one will fall down the fastest. I think that if I use tissue paper it will make the parachute fall faster. I think this because tissue paper is a very light material, so the wind will be able to lift up the parachute but also be able to drift down fast. This is the topic I picked because I thought it would be fascinating to see how the different material will affect gravity.

First, I took the material, paper, tin foil, silk, tissue paper, cups, and felt, and made the parachutes. After, I built all my parachutes I tested them. I went out to my balcony, had two people stand at the bottom of the balcony. One person timed the paratutes, the other brought them back up to me so that I could test them again.

After testing all the parachutes this was the data that I collected. I tested five different materials. The materials that I tested were felt, tin foil, silk, tissue paper, and paper. The shortest time was silk with and avg. of 3.19 seconds. The longest time was tin foil with and avg. of 7.68 seconds. The avg. numbers for felt was 3.38 seconds, paper was 3.80 seconds, and tissue paper was 5.14 seconds.

Doing this experiment I learned that the material of the parachute does affect how quickly the parachute falls. My hypothesis was wrong because I thought that tissue paper would be the quickest, but the silk was the quickest, the time was 3.19 seconds. One error that could have been made during this experiment was that the person timing the parachutes could have stopped the timer a little bit before the parachute was on the ground, or stopped it a little bit after the parachute had landed. That would then mess up the avg. for each parachute. I think this test was accurate because I tested the parachutes three times each. I possibly could have tested the parachutes a couple of times more to get a better avg.

Hypothesis: I think that if I use tissue paper it will make the parachute fall faster. I think this because tissue paper is a very light material, so the wind will be able to lift up the parachute but also be able to drift down fast.

Proceder: 1. Make parachutes out of 5 different materials (make the parachutes the same size.)

2. Drop parachutes from same height

4. Do this 3 times each.

5. Use a timer to see how long it takes for each parachute to drop

Question: Does the material of the parachute affect how fast it drops?