parachuting

Yesterday I visited the dentist and he was nice enough to let be choose a toy from the treasure chest. As searched through the box I saw sticky hands and bouncy balls and my first thought was, "wow, this box is filled with physics!" I chose the parachuting army man. When i got home I was throwing it up in the air. When it first begins to drop, the parachute is not fully opened and the army man falls quickly. When the parachute finally opens up, the man begins to fall much slower. I wonder what made this difference and realized it was air resistance. When i release the army man in the air there are two forces acting upon it, gravity and air resistance. A free-falling object on Earth has an acceleration of -9.8 m/s^2 due to gravity. However, this number ignores air resistance. When the man is in the air without the parachute opened, air resistance is only acting upon his body. The parachute increases surface area and causes an extra upward force, so that the army man will begin to accelerate in the upward direction or decelerate. This allows for the army man to make a safe landing unscathed.