parachutes+yo.

Sarah Feaster Sam Fidler

Goal: To find out how changing the surface area of a parachute affects the time and speed of the guy falling.

Materials: Diagram 1 - the parachutes
 * Parachutes || Surface Area ||
 * Circle || 314.16 cm ||
 * Triangle || 198.09 cm ||
 * Square || 462.25 cm ||
 * Star || 57.41 cm ||
 * Octagon || 482.84 cm ||

Procedure: 1. Make parachutes shown above in Diagram 1 2. Start with one shape and record surface area of selected shape. 3. Attach to little man and walk to pit landing and stand above the ground at 344 cm. 4. While one partner is on the landing, other person is in the pit ready to record time and write down data. 5. Drop the man with parachute and the partner standing in the pit record time. 6. Attach new shaped parachute to man 7. Repeat steps 2-6 with the rest of the parachutes and do 3 trials of each.

Measure of height from pit landing to ground: 344 cm

Conclusion: The bigger the surface area of the parachute, the longer it will take to get to the ground so it will be safer and better for the person using it. In our trials, the octagon had the longest time out of all the parachutes. It had the biggest surface area of 482.84 cm so it worked the best. It then was also proven best from the speed calculations. It went the slowest and the slower the parachute, the longer it will take to get to the ground and safer the person will be so it does not crash. Also with the star, which had the smallest area of 57.41 cm, it went the fastest and took the shortest time to get to the ground. If a person were to use that in real life, they would be sure to hurt themselves or die. From all of this, the parachutes with the larger surface area were the safest and that was proven in our lab.
 * Parachute || Time it took to drop (Trial 1) || Trial 2 || Trial 3 || Average || Speed (m/s) ||
 * Circle || 1.5s || 1.43s || 1.52s || 1.48s || 2.32 m/s ||
 * Triangle || 1.36s || 1.4s || 1.23s || 1.33s || 2.59 m/s ||
 * Square || 1.62s || 1.5s || 1.65s || 1.59s || 2.16 m/s ||
 * Star || 1.39s || 1.2s || 1.3s || 1.31s || 2.63 m/s ||
 * Octagon || 2.33s || 2.3s || 2.2s || 2.28s || 1.51 m/s ||