Today Year 5 tested their parachutes. They had previously designed and made their parachutes with a view to testing their hypotheses out.
They were varying sizes and shapes but they all held a toy soldier at the bottom.
The class then dropped their parachute from the same height and timed how long it took to reach the floor. After doing three drops they worked out the average of the three. Do you know how to work out the average of three times?
They added the three times up and then divided the answer by 3 (because there were three times). This gave them an average drop time.
They found that parachute Number 5 had the slowest drop time, over 2 seconds. This meant that it had caught more air coming down, this slowed its fall down, because there was more air resistance.
Having watched each other dropping the parachutes it gave the class an idea of how best to keep tests fair. Being precise on the height, the angle, how you hold the parachute to drop it and accuracy in calling to drop and stop recording were all important.
Well done Year 5, you worked hard on the experiment.