5E's air resistance experiment

This week in 5E we finished off our experiment on air resistance. After previously studying volcanoes, we were interested in discovering how to help areas which have been affected by eruptions. We wanted to discover which parachute would drop the fastest and consequently help the most people. Below are Joshua's findings:

We tested different types of parachutes and timed to see how quickly they dropped. My group altered the string length and our fastest time was 1.35 seconds. It was quite challenging to measure this time because it was such a quick drop. We knew to make it a fair test we had to keep all the other variables the same (height of drop, force and surface area, for example). Other teams chose different variables to alter. The problem I found challenging was the height of the drop: some people were taller than others, so the test wasn't fair. We solve this problem, we  measured the height against the wall and ensured that all parachutes were dropped from this height. We found that in this experiment, string length affected the time taken for the parachute to drop: the longer the string, the slower the drop. However, we would like to repeat the experiment again under different conditions to measure the accuracy of these results. 

Partial eclipse, total fail (6F)

Here is Owen's report of what happened during the partial eclipse on Friday 20th March:

Excitement was going on in 6F at 09:25 as we were preparing to go outside. However, when we got there, we were crestfallen as we were told that our pin-hole viewers (that we had just literally made) were not needed!

We listened carefully to hear if the birds had gone to sleep, which we expected as a result of the eclipse. This happens because when the moon blocks the light from the sun, it casts a shadow on the earth which makes it dark. We therefore thought that this would make the birds roost.

However, the birds wouldn’t go to sleep. After being idle for 20 minutes with our fingers crossed, we sorrowfully ambled in. We did notice the drop in the temperature and it did get dimmer during the eclipse but we just didn’t get to see it. 90 more years… Nevermind! After we ate lunch, we were frustrated as there was a bright blue sky and if it was later then we would’ve seen it. As I said, 90 more years...