"The Magic School Bus: Soaring into Flight" Science Kit and More

by Joshua

There are A LOT of experiments in "The Magic School Bus: Soaring into Flight" and the last one is about parachutes. First, we did the parachute that comes for the experiment and then we decided we wanted to make a little competition to see who could make a parachute that stays in the air the longest while connected to a Lego guy.

Jeremiah's hypothesis: I think my parachute idea will work the best.
My hypothesis: I think my circle will slow it down 4x more than the control.

Our Lego guy is ready!
So here's what we came up with:
First, we did a control which is basically just the Lego guy on it's own

It took only 0.3 seconds for it to reach the floor
Next, We did Jeremiah's design: just a regular bag. "I did it because there would be so much air in the bag I thought that the air would create drag to slow down the Lego guy."

It did it in a slower 0.9 seconds.
Next, we did Mom's bigger design: a cut-out square. "I did a square design because it would be easy to implicate and the only difference between the two squares would be the size," said Mom

It did it in an extremely slow time of 1.4 seconds.
Next, we did Mom's smaller design: also a cut-out square.

It did it in an faster time of 0.8 seconds.
Next, we did my design: a circle. I thought most modern parachutes are a circle because the circular effect creates a lot of drag on that upward going air. Jeremiah's design does that also but if it flips 90 or even 180 degrees in the wrong direction it will make it stop collecting air and collapse. For my design it would be extremely unlikely.

It did it in a nice 1.2 seconds.
Then Mom made a larger circle and we did that one.

It did it in a very slow time of 1.8 seconds.

Here are the results all together:

Conclusion: My hypothesis was right on. We also found that a larger circular parachute slowed down our Lego man the most.