Chong Hwa Independent High School
PROJECT BASED LEARNING
THEME 2：FORCE & MOTION
CONTENT STANDARD: ACCELERATION OF GRAVITY & FREE FALL
LEARNING STANDARD: DESIGN AND BUILD A PARACHUTE TO REDUCE
THE SPEED OF AIRDROP SUPPLY USING FOUR MAIN FEATURES OF PARACHUTE.
Group
Group Members:
4A ZHONG
1. Iris Khoo Xin Qian 180017 (9)
2. Lew Yi Ying 180010 (13)
3. Tam Hui Xian 180015 (33)
4. Tan Li Ke (34) 180069
5. Tang Zhiyee 180413 (36)
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Chong Hwa Independent High School
CONTENT OF STUDY
1. Introduction
a. Free Fall
b. Free Fall Speed
c. Examples of Free Fall
2. Objective
3. Materials
4. Procedure
5. Results
6. Discussion
7. Conclusion
8. References
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Chong Hwa Independent High School
INTRODUCTION
Free fall
In Newtonian physics, free fall is any motion of a body where gravity is the only force acting
upon it. In the context of general relativity, where gravitation is reduced to a space-time
curvature, a body in free fall has no force acting on it.
An object in the technical sense of the term "free fall" may not necessarily be falling down in the
usual sense of the term. An object moving upwards might not normally be considered to be
falling, but if it is subject to only the force of gravity, it is said to be in free fall. The Moon is thus
in free fall around the Earth, though its orbital speed keeps it in a very far orbit from the Earth's
surface.
Free fall speed
Without the effects of air resistance, the speed of an object free falling
toward Earth would increase by about 32 ft (9.8 m) per second every
second. Luckily for skydivers everywhere, they do experience resistance
from the air as they fall, and because of that resistance, skydivers and any
other object falling within Earth's atmosphere will reach a terminal
velocity.
Example
Examples of objects in free fall include:
1. A spacecraft (in space) with propulsion off (e.g. in a continuous orbit,
or on a suborbital trajectory (ballistics) going up for some minutes,
and then down)
2. An object dropped at the top of a drop tube.
3. An object thrown upward or a person jumping off the ground at low
speed (i.e. as long as air resistance is negligible in comparison to
weight).
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Chong Hwa Independent High School
OBJECTIVE
In this project, we are going to learn about air resistance while making a
parachute.
MATERIALS
A plastic bag, a plastic cup, an egg, 4 piece of strings, scissors, puncher, tape
PROCEDURE
1. Cut a square from the plastic bag.
2. Use a hole punch to punch one hole in each corner of the piece of plastic bag.
3. Thread a piece of string through each hole in the bag and secure by tying the string
firmly on each corner.
4. Use the puncher to punch four holes on opposite sides of the plastic cup.
5. Place the egg into the plastic cup, use the tape to stick the other ends of the strings to
attach the plastic bag and the plastic cup together.
6. Go to a three-storey tall building and drop the parachute with the cup side down.
7. Wait until the parachute lands and examine the condition of the egg, whether it's cracked
or not.
RESULTS
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Chong Hwa Independent High School
The egg delivered by the parachute landed safely and was not broken. The results of the
free fall test matched with our expectations and the experiment was a success.
DISCUSSION
In testing the safety of the parachute, we use the parachute to deliver a raw egg to the ground. In
this testing, our products had made a perfect landing by descending slowly without damaging the
egg.
We are successful in producing an airdrop supply parachute for disaster relief aid. The success to
produce this parachute is based on several concepts include the following:
a. Material used must possess light and strong properties, hence we choose the plastic bag
and strings as materials to reduce the weight of our product, because the plastic bag is
waterproof, flexible, and durable. The tenacity of the rope is strong enough to hold the
weight too.
b. The length of the rope used is suitable for the experiment.
c. The size of the canopy is suitable to create air drag for the weight of the egg.
d. We used 4 strings to connect the canopy and the top of the cup, although 3 ropes are
also enough for the parachute to achieve stability.
e. The plastic is paved and smoothed out to make sure there are no wrinkles
After doing some research on the web, we found out that we can also put some newspaper/
sponge/ cotton in the cup (below the egg) to relieve the impact.
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Chong Hwa Independent High School
CONCLUSION
Throughout this project, whether we know it or not, motion is always around us. Behind every action we
make there is a force. When you drop the egg, the strings that are attached to the plastic bag pull down
and this will open the bag to its full size, which creates a large surface area and more adds to the wind
resistance. More wind resistance slows down the descent of the egg. In this experiment, the goal is to
create more wind resistance to slow the speed of the object.
REFERENCES
1. https://headrushtech.com/blog/what-free-fall-quick-lesson-physics.html
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_fall#Examples
3. https://www.education.com/science-fair/article/egg-parachute/
4. http://force-and-motion.weebly.com/what-is-force.html
