Continuing our learning about air resistance, we decided to investigate what improved the success of a parachute. Because we had already learnt about what air resistance is and seen it in action with our running parachute, we already knew what we expected to see from our investigation.
We worked in groups, each changing one aspect of our parachute to see whether this affected how safely it brought an egg down to the ground. Each group chose what they wanted to investigate.
- material it’s made out of
- its size
- the number of parachutes
- the number of holes in the parachute
Changing the number of holes
Changing the material its made out of
We tested them by holding the bottom of the cup 1m above the floor (carefully covered by plastic bags) and dropping them. We could then see how damaged – if at all – the egg was and evaluate the success of the parachute.
We were surprised by some of our results and others were what we expected. We’re now going to discuss what we observed in class and consider why we didn’t always see what we expected – a crucial part of the scientific enquiry process.