As part of their learning on forces, Year Five have been finding out about the effects of air resistance and investigated the following question: Does the size of a parachute affect the time it takes for it to fall to the ground?

Developing their knowledge of enquiry types to help master the big idea of working scientifically, children considered the variables they would have to change and keep the same. First they decided that the size of the parachute would be a variable that they changed. When considering which variables to keep the same they selected:  the material each parachute was made from; the object that was attached to each parachute and the height each parachute was dropped from. This was really important to ensure we had a fair test and that our results would be reliable. The children then took to the playground, making use of our climbing frame to ensure parachutes were dropped from the same height and selecting a stopwatch to record the time it took each parachute to fall. 

After conducting the investigation the children reflected on their results and shared that "as the size of the parachute increases, the time it takes to fall to the ground increases too." This helped us to understand the effect of air resistance. 

Finally, the Year Five scientists reflected on the precision of their results and how accurate they were, considering what they could perhaps do differently next time.