This week, we had a fun science afternoon. We were looking at air resistance and how it slows moving objects down. This week our big question was- “Does the amount of surface area affect the rate in which an object falls?”. To answer this question, the children made parachutes of three different sizes to see if the bigger/smaller parachute, the quicker/slower it fell. The children carefully cut black sacks and fixed them on to a playmobile figure before using stopwatches to time the rate of falling. We discussed the importance of a fair test and decided that the height from which it is dropped from, the person dropping and the material of the parachute had to remain the same. The results showed that the larger the surface area, the larger the air resistance and therefore it fell slower.
The children were able to enter in one parachute into a competition which involved Mrs Marritt dropping a parachute from the ICT suite. The one that fell the slowest won and this was Alex’s group!
We obviously had to see air resistance in action, so in the afternoon we played lots of fun games using the scoot boards. The children worked well as a team to compete in a fun competition. It was a fun afternoon involving lots of science!
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