At-Home STEM Activities: Build and Test Your Own Parachute

Image Credit: Wisconsin Skydiving center

How do Parachutes Work?

A parachute works by forcing air into the front of it and creating a structured wing under which the canopy pilot can fly. Parachutes are controlled by pulling down on steering lines which change the shape of the wing, cause it to turn, or to increase or decrease its rate of descent. Modern skydiving parachutes are rectangular in shape – very different from older parachutes that were round. The change in shape has given skydivers much more control over their parachutes. Today, they can turn their canopies, change the rate of descent, flatten their glide, and make parachute landings more accurate than ever.

Parachutes are important because they create drag on a falling object. All object fall to the ground at the same rate. If a human jumped out of an airplane without a parachute, they would hit the ground at too fast a rate to survive. Parachutes collect the air as the person falls to create more drag and slow the person down as they head towards the ground. In this activity you will make your own parachute and test your design to see if it falls safely to the ground.

I used a small ceramic camel I had as my weight, but it broke during my tests, so make sure you pick something that is durable or you don’t care much about!

Materials:

• A plastic bag

• Scissors

• String

• A small object to act as the weight

Instructions:

1.Cut out a large square from your plastic bag or material. (You can try to cut your bag into a circle, a rectangle, or other shape to test out how different shapes work against drag.)

2. Cut a small whole near the edge of each side and tie a piece of string around each hole.

3. Make sure the strings are of equal length and are long enough to tie your object to.

4. Tie the pieces of string to the object you are using as a weight.

5. Find an open space to test out your parachute. Try crumpling the chute up into a ball and dropping it. They open it up and try again. Did you see the difference? Try to drop your parachutes from different heights and see how it falls. Watch the video below to see how we dropped our parachute.  

So… What's Happening?

The hope is your parachute will descend slowly to the ground, giving your weight a comfortable landing. When you release the parachute the weight pulls down on the strings and opens up a large surface area of material that uses air resistance to slow it down. The larger the surface area, the more air resistance and the slower the parachute will drop.

Try cutting a small hole in the middle of the parachute, which will allow air to slowly pass through it rather than spilling out over one side, this should help the parachute fall straighter if you see it going sideways.