Almost Perfect Parachutes

 

 

 Hey bloggers, this week we've been looking into thinking like an Engineer, our challenge was to build a Parachute that would take the longest to glide down two Steel Nuts, the materials are provided and from school. 

I've grouped up with Damian, Taine, Cameron and Brock. Our first idea was to make 2 to 3 Parachutes, because we've thought it would increase the amount of drag and drag up more air, but it didn't work, because the smaller Parachutes (0.72 seconds). 

Our Second idea was to make a Para glide reusing our previous material (fabric), because we didn't thought a lot with the materials and taped some paper towels to be more sealed, we thought it was better because it was bigger (means more sizable drag) and easy to make, unlike hot air Balloon shaped ones would be much harder, but it still didn't did well enough (roughly 1.3 seconds).

On our final idea (in the image) was to use a wide paper, because it's light, but durable, we've made sure that the ribbons were the same length and it was symmetrical, also not tangled up, I've also used some masking tape for the two Steel Nuts making sure that it doesn't tilt and move when gliding, it surprisingly went for a quite good 2.84 seconds and came 3rd out of the whole class.

I think using a paper Parachute wouldn't be that great, because it wouldn't easily open when example a rocket dropping and would require a lot of air pressure (because it was to be in some sort of compartment, I think), other than that we can improve more on our understanding for each material and somewhat know what good materials are good for some purpose. 

I hope you've enjoyed our challenge in building Parachutes as a part of our Wonder Project to building our rockets. What materials are good for making Parachutes other than Plastic related bags?