Parachute

Hey guys!! So, our material finally came in and it looks very good and VERY PINK:) Over the past week when Gabby was gone, I did spill hole research (before the material came in.) Then, I cut the spill hole for the actual parachute.  I tried to do the math, but it did not work AT ALL, so I just made it the size of a quarter, so we can make it bigger if we need to.  Then, I made a test parachute that was really small.  I attached a lot of orange string to the sides of the parachute and then taped the other ends to a tennis ball.  At first, I had only four strings, but it didn't work because the sides that weren't attached to string flapped up (so it looked flat.) I ended up attaching four more strings (8 in all.)  We went to the bleachers and tested it and it worked really well!!! It worked really well and it deployed very quickly.  Since it went so well, we think that that is going to be a smaller version of the actual thing.  We will have it done by Monday or Tuesday of next week and then have a couple of days to test!  Everything is going so well with the parachute and we are all very excited!!!

Spill Hole Research

Hey guys! So, since Gabby is gone and our material isn't in yet, I was doing research today about the spill hole and its size.  Every time we did a test run, the spill hole seemed to be too big.

We aren't sure whether or not to even use a spill hole...because we might just scrunch the top of it so that there is more air resistance (because it isn't so smooth.)

I was doing research (on the website below) and it said that the spill hole was about 20% the diameter of the actual canopy.  It is only about 4% of the area, so very very small.

http://www.fruitychutes.com/how_to_make_a_parachute.htm

February 16th ~ Video

Hey guys!  Here is a link to the video of us testing the parachute model.  It wouldn't load into iMovie, so it is about seven minutes, so definitely fast forward through some parts:) We are hoping our material comes in soon so we can start building the actual thing!

Parachute Testing

February 16

Hey everybody!  Today the people in 1st period who are in our group (Maybry, Elizabeth, and Gray) made a parachute and attached it to Ashley's group's container.  They tested it this morning, and then we tested it again.  It worked pretty well, and tells us a lot about how to make the actual one.  The only thing that was that the spill hole was a little bit too big.  If it was smaller, it would have slowed down even more than it already did.  We will upload the video tomorrow during class...after we edit it because it is a little bit toooo long:) We figured out that the spill hole's size is extremely important to the parachute.

We will keep you updated!

Camera Into Space

Right now in science class we are working on sending a camera into space.  We divided up into teams and Gabby, Maybry, Gray, Elizabeth, and I are working on the parachute.  We have been doing research and coming up with what materials we are going to use.  We have a google doc page up that we are working on since we are in different classes.  We have a few ideas about the design and material...

Material: a type of "rip-stop" nylon that is specially used for parachutes, rope that is fairly thick to be able to support it.

Design:

:


Hopefully we will have some more updates soon...maybe pictures of the test runs:)

Balloon Racer

We finally got our balloon racer to work!!!  Here are the calculations...

Mass: 100 grams

Acceleration: 0.24 m/s *squared*

Total net force: 24 N

Pictures:

I was not too happy with Gabby at the moment...

I think that we built like three different cars...and Gabby broke one!!!


















Description: Our balloon racer's body was made out of styrofoam and the wheels were CD's.  To secure the wheels, there were Gatorade tops that kept them in lign.  There were wooden dowels that were the axels for the wheels.  At first, the body was made of cardboard, but it wasn't sturdy enough.  It was also too heavy.  The last thing that we did was put weights (20 grams) on the front to make sure that it went straight.