🪂 Parachute materials: the whole packet

🪂 Parachute materials · 4th–8th grade · 1 day of testing · free · 60 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 14 days away

Count back from your fair day and write in each date. Fewer days than this? The jobs share days, in this order; nothing is skipped.

Dates from my teacher

• My question is due
• Testing starts
• My results table and graph are due
• My board is due

In this packet

1. 🗓️ My project plan
2. 💭 My hypothesis
3. 🧺 Change, measure, keep the same
4. 🪜 My steps
5. 📊 My results
6. 📓 My logbook
7. ✅ My conclusion
8. ✂️ Board titles to cut out
9. 🏅 The judge's questions and my certificate

If I change what the parachute is made from, then how long the parachute takes to fall will ________________, because _____________________________________________

What I think will happen, in my own words:

4 levels × 5 tries at each = 20 tries in all. If anything you keep the same changes, you won't know which change made the difference.

What I need

• 🛍️ Plastic bags: 1 big one
• 📄 Paper: 1 sheet
• 👕 A cotton T-shirt or tea towel
• 🧻 Tissue paper: 1 sheet
• 🧵 String or yarn: 16 pieces, each 30 cm
• 🖇️ Paper clips: 8
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer
• ✂️ Kid scissors
• 🩹 Tape
• 📏 A ruler

Be safe: 👶 Small parts · 🧍 Drop from standing: never climb

1. Cut a 30 cm square from a plastic bag, from paper, from cotton cloth and from tissue paper.
2. Tie or tape a 30 cm string to each corner of every square.
3. Tie each parachute's four strings together and hook on two paper clips.
4. Hold the plastic parachute as high as you can reach, standing on the floor. Never climb on a chair.
5. Let go as a helper starts the timer, and stop it when it lands.
6. Write the time down, then drop it four more times.
7. Do five drops with each of the other three parachutes.
8. Find the mean for each material and draw a bar graph.

Write each number in your results table the moment you measure it.

I changed: Material   I measured: how long the parachute takes to fall (seconds)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: material along the bottom, seconds up the side)

What I noticed: ______________________________________________

Write something every day you work on it, even the days you only gather things. More days? The three-page logbook prints from peabody.kids/science-fair/templates/logbook.

My hypothesis was ☐ right ☐ partly right ☐ not right.

I know because my numbers show:

What surprised me, or what might have gone wrong (7th and up):

Next time I would test:

Idea: Change a second thing: make the best material in 20, 30 and 40 cm squares, and graph the fall times of the three sizes.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: which material makes the slowest parachute?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing what the parachute is made from would change how long the parachute takes to fall, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed what the parachute is made from (Plastic bag, Paper, Cotton cloth, Tissue paper) and measured how long the parachute takes to fall in seconds.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept 30 cm squares and the same 30 cm strings the same, so only what the parachute is made from was different.
5. How many times did you test it? Say something like: 5 times at each of my 4 levels, and I found the middle number.
6. What did you find out? Show me in your numbers. Say something like: Look at my table: Plastic bag and Tissue paper gave different numbers, and here's the pattern.
7. Was your hypothesis right? How do you know? Say something like: My numbers show whether I was right, partly right or not, and I can show you where.
8. Did anything go wrong, or surprise you? Say something like: One try was odd, so I did it again and wrote it in my logbook.
9. If you did it again, what would you change or test next? Say something like: I'd change a second thing: make the best material in 20, 30 and 40 cm squares, and graph the fall times of the three sizes.