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How The Canopy Affects The Drop Time Of A Parachute Experiment

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Parachute Investigation Introduction The aim of this experiment was to investigate how the cross-sectional area of the canopy affects the drop time of the parachute and therefore determine the most proficient design for reducing the force applied on the payload upon impact. It was predicted that the larger the area of the canopy the more time it will take to reach the ground from a constant height. By considering the fundamentals of air resistance, Newton’s First and Second Law, it can be observed that as the cross-sectional area increases so does the air resistance as seen below in Equation 1 where A is the area and Fair is the air resistance. (Elephant and feather, 2018) A ∝ Fair …show more content…

If the stop watches were running faster than they were meant to, the drop time would have been smaller not resulting in any change if the same stopwatch was used for all calculations. Here, Equation 2 can be observed, it was stated that acceleration is dependent upon air resistance as gravity and mass are constant however time affects mass and if mass does not stay constant Equation 2 does not apply. However, this could be reverted by repeating the test with a different stopwatch to compare the results to identify the errors. Another error that could affect the accuracy would be a broken measuring tape, if it were incorrectly calibrated and was missing values, it could be possible that the constant drop height of 6.6 m measured could in fact be 6.7 m or 6 m ultimately leading to unreliable drop times. This could again be minimised through repeating the measuring of the experiment with another measuring tape and contrasting. In addition, another systematic error could be the weighting scale not being properly calibrated, it can be seen if the 50g masses weren’t 50g then the test would not be reproducible and deemed unreliable. This can be fixed by comparing the weight shown on each weighting scales. Because of the fact, there was no true value given, it was difficult to assume the percent error thus how much systematic error this practical was affected

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