P16 - Parachute Making

One day while playing I asked her what if I leave this stone in the air, it will fly or it will fall down. She replied, 'Of course, it will fall down.' 

I didn't expected her to know the reason and explained her that it is because of Gravity or Gravitational Force. Gravitational force is the force which is keeping us on earth and help us walk. She can relate to it as she saw moon walk in her favourite 'Peppa Pig' show. We dropped many things in the air to see the impact of gravitational force and as expected every thing fall back on earth. She told, 'mumma every thing has gravity.' It was difficult to explain that the gravity is applied to everything which has mass. Of course I took reference to the moon walk (We cannot walk on the moon as it doesn't have gravity).

As usual how can any of our discussion be completed without experiment  :) and this time it started with noticing about what happen to objects with different mass. So, we took two balls with different weights. I asked her to go on the ground flour and see which ball hit the ground first. I left both the ball with same pressure at same time. And she was happy that her basket ball hit the ground first. 

To my surprise she knew the reasons behind it and said it's because basket ball weights more. I don't know how she understood that but yes she was correct. 

I was confused whether to talk about Air Resistance or it will be little too much for her. Air resistance is a force that works opposite to gravitational force when the object is moving. It is like friction. I thought it will be really too much for her but how can we miss the parachute making activity which is the best experiment to understand this. So, we made a parachute with a plastic bag. 

What you Need 
        - Plastic Bag
        - Disposable cup
        - Wool / String
        - Scissors
        - Measuring tape or ruler

First, we cut a rectangular shape from an old plastic bag and four pieces of equal length strings. Then we made small holes in the four ends of the rectangular plastic and cup; and attached the string as shown in the picture below. 

The most exciting part of the activity began here. Now, we left one cup without parachute and another with parachute. We both observed the air resistance in the cup with parachute, it came down with a really low speed. I tried to capture the parachute falling down.

It was so much fun throwing the parachute down, we did it more than ten times. I was both happy and worried that she can relate it to hot air ballon and parachute ride. Happy because she has good observation and can relate things. Worried as she asked can we also hold this parachute and jump. It took good amount of discussion and experiment (putting her doll in the cup while throwing) added with Youtube videos and pictures to explain her we need a big parachute to hold our weight. She even asked me to build a big parachute so that she can try. I can't do that but I promised that one day I will take you to the parachute ride.