Egg drop parachutes

Do you think you can make a parachute to get your eggs safely to the ground? Try out this experiment and find out!

The Experiment

Materials:

raw eggs

ziploc bags

brown bags, trash bags, newspaper, or anything else you want to use

string

scissors

hole punch

Try it out:

1) cut out a square from your bag. Try out different sizes!

2) use a hole punch to punch holes in each corner of the square.

3) Cut up your string so it's the same length as the side of your square.

4) Tie a piece of string to each hole.

5) Put your egg in a ziploc bag and tie the bag shut with the string.

6) Drop your egg parachute. Which material works best? What size parachute keeps your egg from breaking?

What's happening:

When you let go of your parachute, it should puff up. That's because of air resistance. The air pushes up against the square, and gravity pulls it down. The air that pushes up is also called resistance or drag. When the resistance is bigger, there is more upward force, so the parachute falls down slower.

When you make the parachute square bigger, there is a larger space for the resistance to push against. That means a parachute with a bigger square is even slower and that keeps your egg from breaking.

If you thought that was cool...

Check out aerospace engineering. Aerospace engineers figure out how to make things like planes and rockets fly. Find out more about aerospace engineering here.