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Transcript

Controlled Descent: It's no joke!

Meredith Gallagher and Ian Jetzer

Cherokee Middle School

Falling With Style

Flying animals

Buzz Lightyear

Flying Snake

Videos

Materials

1) Rocket

2) Parachute

3) Zip ties

4) Timers

5) Ruler

6) Video camera

Experimental

Data

Conclusion

Our Project

Motivation:

West High Rocket Club / TARC

As we expected, our experiment showed that the more you choke the shroud lines on a parachute, the faster the descent, and the descent time decreased linearly.

Ian's oldest brother worked with NASA this year as part of West High Rocket Club!

  • Students at West High build rockets for a national contest called TARC (Team America Rocketry Challenge)
  • Three rules to win the contest:
  • Keep the eggs intact
  • Reach correct altitude
  • Get the correct flight time

We wanted to control how fast the rocket falls to the ground using a parachute.

Vocabulary

  • Air resistance
  • Parachute
  • Shroud Lines
  • Inflate
  • Choking
  • Zip-Tie
  • Altitude
  • Apogee
  • Descent time

Initial Procedure

What we tried first:

  • Launch rocket
  • Start timer at apogee (highest point)
  • Stop timer at impact

Why we changed the procedure

Too Many Variables!

1) We couldn't control the parachute deployment

2) We couldn't control rocket altitude

3) Rockets and engines break when the parachute fails

How we changed the procedure

We dropped the open parachute attached to the rocket off the top of a 40 foot tower at Blue Mounds State Park at different levels of choking and then recorded the descent time.

What is choking?

Choking is tying a parachute's shrould lines off so that the parachute does not inflate fully, decreasing descent time, because there's less air resistance (drag).

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