Does Weight Affect Drag?

Drop a perfect project into your lesson plans. Groups use different building materials to create models of parachutes for food drops. After testing out their prototypes, they make improvements to their designs.

This lesson certainly will not be a drag! Little engineers design parachutes that make use of air resistance and, as a result, slow the descent of the payload as much as possible. It is an opportunity to teach about many motion concepts:...

Aspiring aeronautical engineers demonstrate different forces as they construct and test paper airplanes. This lesson plan links you to a website that models the most effective paper airplane design, an animation describing the forces...

Sixth graders make 2 different kinds of parachutes and record and graph the time for each one for the different drag forces. In this parachute lesson plan, 6th graders compare the results to the rest of the class of each parachute and...

Students study drag and how it affects a parachute in the sky.  For this parachutes lesson students build models and compare their drag. 

Students explore different size circles to discover the relationship between diameter and circumference. In this circles and Pi lesson, students construct simple parachutes using circle patterns of varying sizes. Students predict the...

Students design a skydiver and parachute constraption to demonstrate how drag caused by air resistance slows the descent of skydivers as they travel back to Earth. They experience how gravity pulls the skydiver toward the earth and how...

Experiment with different sizes of parachutes to find out if size matters when slowing the descent of the parachute. The Science Buddies project ideas are set up consistently beginning with an abstract, objective, and introduction,...

Middle schoolers make a parachute. In this air resistance lesson, students create a parachute using materials they think will work the best. Middle schoolers try out their parachutes, noting which one worked the best. Students discuss...

Students study the basics of parachuting.  In this flight and aerodynamics lesson students make a simple parachute and investigate different variables that can cause potential problems.