APPARATUS: To do this experiment properly I will need, putty, ruler, stopwatch, string, plastic from plastic bag, scissors, pen and paper.
METHOD: First of all I will make my parachute which will be 20cm by 20cm (400cm2). I will then attach the strings to the corners of the chute. At the other end of the strings I will experiment with different weights of putty. I will start with the putty with the greatest weight and work down from there. I will drop the parachute from the same height each time. The height will be 1metre and 60cm. I will time how long it takes for the parachutes to drop this height and record it in a table.
DIAGRAM:
METHOD CONT.: My results will be recorded in a table as follows,
SAFETY FEATURES: There are only two hazards within this experiment, one of them is when you are using scissors to cut out the parachute, the other one is when your standing on a table to get enough height to drop the parachute from.
CONTROLNG VARIABLES: To make the experiment fair I need to control certain things. One of the is the height at which each parachute is dropped. If I drop them from different heights then I will get invalid results as the heavier one may be dropped from a different height to the lighter one. Another variable I need to control is the area of the parachute. If I do not keep the area of the parachute the same the results will not be right as a bigger chute will create more air resistance and fall slower.
RESULTS: The recordings in the following table are the results from the experiment.
These results from the test I carried out show that my prediction was right. But what if I did something wrong in the experiment without realising it? What if the results are wrong? To find this out I carried out another series of tests in exactly the same way as the last ones and here are the results from them.
Although there is a much greater range between the 5g and 1g tests in this set of experiments they still show the same basic pattern. That the heavier parachutes fall quicker. This graph shows the results for the first set of tests.
The graph below shows the results for the second experiment.
This is the graph from the second experiment.
EVALUATION: The two tables and their graphs clearly show that my prediction was right. That the heavier the putty on the parachute, the faster the parachute falls. Although the second set of results have a greater range between the slowest and the fastest falling chutes then the first set of results, they both fully correspond with each other in as much as that they both show the same pattern. Both sets of results show that the greater the weight of the putty, the faster the chute falls.
CONCLUSION: The theory in my prediction must be right. I said in my prediction that the greater the size of the putty, the grater the effect gravity has on it because gravity has a bigger surface area to act upon. The tests I carried out have proven me right. They all show that the heavier putties (which are bigger in physical size) fall faster because gravity has more mass to work on.
