Gravity and Air Resistance

Title: Gravity and Air Resistance

Question: How does air resistance affect the acceleration of falling objects.

Hypothesis: From my prospective the surface area of an object and mass should affect the acceleration of falling objects,by increasing the force of air resistance against the force of gravity.

Materials:

● Paper (4 sheets of equal size)

● Meter stick

● Stopwatch

● Scissors

● Pencil or pen

Procedure:

1. Get all the materials needed for this project.

2. Make a data table for the 4 pieces of paper.

3. Measure a height of 2.5m at the spot where you will be testing your hypothesis and mark it.

4. You or your partner drop the first flat sheet of paper from the 2.5m mark. Use the stopwatch to time how long it takes for the paper to reach the ground.Record your times and averages in your data table.

5. Crumple a sheet of paper into a loose ball and repeat step 4.

6. Crumple a sheet of paper into a tight ball and repeat step 4.

7. Use scissors to shape a piece of paper so that it will fall slowly. You may cut, tear, or fold the paper into any design but do not increase or decrease mass.

8. Make a graph from the information that you have recorded on your table. The variables should be Trials for the Independent (x-axis) and Acceleration (seconds) for the Dependent (y-axis).

Observations:

1. The flat paper had the slowest acceleration because its air resistance was greater which was caused by surface area..

2. The loosely crumpled paper had a faster acceleration then the flat paper because its surface area decreased even though the mass is still the same.

3. The tightly crumpled paper had the greatest acceleration because the surface area was very small so the force of air resistance was small.

4. As for the design that my partner and I made had almost the same amount of surface area as the flat piece of paper so the acceleration was very low. We just bended to of the corners on one...