Team X Status Report
We learnt that air resistance is a frictional force against a moving object. For our lander to not smash into lots of pieces we needed to design our lander to have a wide surface area. This is because a larger surface area means more air resistance and the more air resistance the slower the lander will fall, decreasing the force at impact. We also learnt about potential energy and kinetic energy. At the beginning of our drop, just before we let go of our lander, there is 100% potential energy but as the lander drops the potential energy decreases and the kinetic energy increases until the lander hits the ground and all energy is transferred. So we designed our lander so that air resistance is at a high (by adding a parachute) and that our landing takes lots of the impact when it hits the ground (we added long straws attached to styrofoam peanuts.
So many things have gone well with our project such as our ability to constantly improve our design however, we have been quite slow with building and testing that it has caused us to come in a lunch to do some work on our landers. By filling out our design test we have learnt that tin foil is a good parachute because it slows down the fall however the problem is that tin foil is very fragile (tears very easily) and if you don't have a large area of the foil it will not slow down the fall as much. This is shown in a video linked below.
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