fairfolio
Saved Projects

The Effect of Parachute Material on Parachute Speed

CSEF · 2008 Aerodynamics/ Hydrodynamics (Junior Division Only)

Karina Ramirez · Prueitt (John L.) Elementary School, Wasco, Kern County

Overview

Objectives/Goals My project was to determine if the parachute's material would effect the speed of the parachute's descent. I believe that a parachute with a heavier material will fall faster than a parachute with a lighter material because of the added weight. Methods/Materials I made 10 parachutes of the exact same size, but different materials. I tied them to a plastic army man, and dropped them all 15 times from a 10 foot ceiling. I timed their fall to see if they fell at the same rate. Then I averaged each parachute type and divided by 10 to get the speed in feet per second. Results The parachute with the lightest material took longer to fall on average and the parachute with the heaviest material did fall faster on average. Conclusions/Discussion My conclusion is that my hypothesis was supported. The parachute with the heavier weight did fall faster than the parachute with the lighter weight. Therefore the speed of the parachute was effected by the parachute material.

Summary statement

I tested parachutes of different materials to see if this has an effect on the speed a parachute falls.

Help received

Mother helped with board; Teacher helped with report.

Competition history

  • CSEF 2008 Aerodynamics/ Hydrodynamics (Junior Division Only) · Entry J0124

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google