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How Parachutes Work
Beginning designers come up with lots of ways to improve
a design, but their ideas often fail because they do
not really understand how the device works. Without
understanding the cause-effect relationship between
a device's parts and its performance as a whole, students
must rely on haphazard guessing and random trial-and-error
testing. They cannot do informed designing.
This video has interviews with MIT engineering professor
David Gordon Wilson and Atlanta-based parachute jump
instructor Carl Muerer. Both talk about how parachutes
work, and give design tips while addressing the following
questions: How does air flow around, through, and past
a canopy to create drag? Does an oscillating parachute
fall faster than one that stays level with the ground
during descent? How do vent holes help improve a parachute's
performance?
In the rest of the How Parachutes Work section, you
can find out about:
• History
of parachutes and their major defects
• Different Chute
Types and how they work
• Newton's
Laws applied to explaining a chute's descent
• Factors that affect the Drag
Force that a parachute system generates
• Factors that determine a chute's maximum
or Terminal
Speed
• Key differences between Real/Model
Chutes
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