This lab was a two (2) part activity for the 8th graders. Lately, we’ve been learning about mass, weight, gravity, forces, Newton’s Laws, air resistance, motion and much more within the realm of physics. For the first part of the lab, students were testing gravity by dropping an empty water bottle from a meter which was timed using a stopwatch. After a few trials with the empty bottle, students filled the bottles a quarter of the way with sand and repeated the process. The final trial the bottles were filled halfway with sand and they were tested once more. The students observed that no matter how much sand was in the bottles, the time it took to hit the floor was relatively the same (slight differences due to human error which we discussed as a class). The reason for this is because gravity on Earth is constant (9.8 meters per second squared or 9.8m/s^2); this means no matter what the mass of the object is, as long as there is no outside forces acting on the object like air resistance, they will all fall at the same rate!

The second part of the activity involved the students testing air resistance! In this section of the lab, students were given a toy and a bunch of materials which they would use to create a parachute for their toy. We saw a wide range of ideas and these are just some of them! The scholars concluded that the parachutes needed to be light weight but cover a large surface area in order to provide the most air resistance. In the end, students had a blast and they were able to test their designs by dropping them off of the jungle gym and outside the second story window of the Science Lab.