Bayer MSMS | How does a parachute work?

www.bayerus.com/msms -- Did you ever wonder how a parachute works? Let's make sense of it with science.

There's only one way to learn how parachutes work so...

... here we are, about 10,000 feet up in the air, ready to take one giant leap for science. Everyone have their parachutes packed and strapped on?

Okay. One ... two ... three ... and ...

... Right now, we're really falling fast. In fact, at about 100 miles per hour, you could say we're plummeting.

The reason we're falling so fast is the Earth's gravity has a hold on us. And it's pulling us down.
In our position, the best way to counteract the effects of gravity is to pull the rip-cord on our parachute.

See, as the parachute above expands, it catches air. And the force of that air pushing up against our parachute creates a lot of air resistance.

As you can feel, this air resistance is really strong. So much so, that it equals the pull of gravity. And the two cancel each other out.

We're still heading to Earth, but instead of plunging downward at 100 miles per hour, we're softly floating though the sky at a speed of around 10 miles per hour. So even though we jumped at 10,000 feet, thanks to air resistance ...

... Our landing feels more like we jumped off of a four-foot wail.

Thanks for diving into air resistance and gravitational pull with us today. And now you know, it all makes sense with science.

This has been presented by Bayer Corporation's national education program, Making Science Make Sense®.

Bayer Corporation, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pa., is the U.S. subsidiary of Bayer AG, an international health care, nutrition and high-tech materials group based in Leverkusen, Germany. Our business activities focus on health care, crop science and high-tech materials. To learn more, visit: www.bayerus.com/msms/. "Like" us on Facebook facebook.com/BayerMSMS and follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/BayerMSMS. Thank you for viewing!

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