Jumping into June

Challenge
The first parachute jump was taken by Garnerin in Paris in 1797. Since then, engineers have been designing many types of parachutes for different needs with the right material and attachments. June is a great month to get outside and go sky diving with parachutes! For this challenge, you won’t be building a parachute for yourself, but for a toy to safely reach the ground. Your challenge is to construct the best parachute for the safest landing for a plastic figurine. What will be the best material to use? What do parachutes look like? What type of string should be used to attach to the figurine? How large should the parachute be and how long should the strings be? What is the most effective parachute for the figurine?

Your parachute does have some criteria and constraints. Only the materials provided can be used in your design. Your parachute has to be connected to the figurine the same exact way for all tests. The same height should be tested every time.  

Materials

• Plastic figurines: all similar (army men or Lego minifigures)
• masking tape
• plastic bags
• different sized coffee filters
• tissue paper
• t-shirts
• yarn
• string
• fishing line

Hints and Tips for Success

1. Allow students planning and discussion time by having them experiment with the items to see how flexible, movable, and heavy they are. Students could test out materials by cutting them the same size and dropping them to see how they move through the air.
2. After experimenting, allow student groups to plan their design. Include as many ways to improve their parachutes as needed.
3. For differentiation, adjust the amount of materials available and allowed to use, add any additional materials, increase or decrease the weight the parachute needs to carry, give specific dimensions the parachute must be. Adjustments could be made to make it more challenging or simpler.
4. Make sure groups are measuring their parachutes sizes and string lengths, timing the drops, and observing the effectiveness of their parachutes for analyzing purposes.  Students should be trying to answer the questions stated in the challenge.
5. Determine a process for attaching the parachute to the figurine for all groups so it is consistent,  inform students of the height which the parachute will be dropped, and agree on how the parachute will be dropped (pinching the middle of the parachute, holding it with and outstretched arm, and dropping it, instead of throwing, works best).
6. Discuss properties of each material and ask students to think about the different parachutes they might have seen. Students can research the different types of parachutes (sizes, shapes, materials, forms) and how they are used in the real world.
7. Connect to science by discussing gravity, air resistance (drag), and/or properties of materials.
8. Connect to ELA by reading I Fall Down by Vicki Cobb, where it takes the reader through different stop-and-try-it moments to better understand gravity.  Nonfiction books about parachutes or gravity would fit well with this concept as well.