3Force-10

This lesson is the first part of a two lesson investigation/fun activity. The idea is to have the pupils build and test parachutes. This links in with the work they have been doing on types of forces and Newton's second law and also prempts work on terminal verlocity which will follow next term.

The brief is for pupils to build the best parachute. Best in this case is defined as providing the slowest landing speed for a 100g mass. This will be tested in the second lesson with PASCO and picket tape.

Have pupils talk about air resistance and the various ways we can increase it (they should be able to link drag to speed, shape and fluid). Talk about where it is useful (parachutes) and where it is not so useful (aircraft, cars) linking into how drag is increased or decreased.

Get pupils to think about how to make the investigation fair, what they should vary/keep the same etc. Hopefully they will get the idea that we should drop a 100g mass without any parachute to see how effective their chutes have been.

The intro should take around 10 minutes with the remander of the lesson turned over to creating the parachutes. They will need to think about how they are going to attach their 100g mass

Equipment: Lots of string and plastic bags PASCO light gate with picket tape PASCO explorer