Falling Parachute Experiment
Aim
To investigate the motion of objects for which the air resistance is quite large.
Introduction
Free fall is a special type of motion in which the only force acting upon an object is gravity. Objects that are said to be undergoing free fall, are not encountering a significant force of air resistance; they are falling under the sole influence of gravity. . Under such conditions, all objects will fall with the same rate of acceleration, regardless of their mass [1].
W = mg
where W=weight (N); m= mass of object (kg); g=gravitational acceleration (m/s2).
The amount of air resistance depends upon the speed of the object. A falling object will continue to accelerate to higher speeds until they encounter an amount of air resistance that is equal to their weight. The object will accelerate to higher speeds before reaching a terminal velocity. Thus, more massive objects fall faster than less massive objects because they are acted upon by a larger force of gravity; for this reason, they accelerate to higher speeds until the air resistance force equals the gravity force [1].
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Peer Reviews
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Quality of writing
The quality of writing is good. Clearly organised and visually very well presented this report was only really let down by its conclusions.
Level of analysis
There should be greater emphasis on the meaning of this result for example what the gradient of the line represents. It has been shown the weight of the object is inversely proportional to the time for it to fall but there is no mention of what this could mean - this is where it would be good to refer back to an earlier hypothesis or theoretical expectation. There is some qualitative explanation of errors but these aren't calculated numerically and don't show as error bars on the graph. This would make it easier to assess the reliability of the report and, hence, its significance.
Response to question
This answer is OK but far from perfect. It is customary to put a hypothesis or prediction from theory of what you expect to happen and then link back to it in the conclusion. The use of some phrase such as force of gravity are confusing and should be avoided, using weight helps to make it clear. The work is very well presented and clearly well organised.