How to make a Parachute/Plastic cover parachute

When we were kids, me and my brother used to tie the ends of a plastic cover with a thread and try to fly it from the terrace 😀 I don’t know what our plan was, whether to make it fly like a kite or like a parachute. It wasn’t perfect but it did fly and gave us many hours of fun! Seeing us, our neighbor kids made a kite of their own and joined our fun 😀 Nostalgic!!

I wanted to make a proper parachute for my kids. Something that would open up and land like a original parachute. I didn’t know it involved so many technical details! But the goal is achieved and our parachute did open up and landed 🙂 Also, it doesn’t involve anything fancier. All you need is a plastic bag. Come on, Let’s see how to make this parachute..

Materials needed

• Plastic bag/Plastic cover
• Thread/Twine
• Something a bit heavier than the plastic bag to tie at the end
• Scissors
• Scotch tape/Cello tape
• Push pin/Safety pin

Instructions

• Take a plastic bag and cut it into a circle. If you want to do something simpler, you can cut out a square and proceed with the following steps.

• If you have decided to have a circle, punch out 8 holes at equal distance from each other and put the scotch/cello tape over it. In case of a square, punch out 4 holes at 4 corners and put the scotch tape over it.

• Now, cut 8 threads of equal length. The length of the threads should be at least 1.5 times the diameter of the circle.

• Then, using the push pin/safety pin, insert the thread in the holes through the scotch tape. Tie a knot around it.

• Now, gather all the threads together and tie a knot at the end. While tying the knot, leave some space for an object to be tied at the end.

• Tie an object which is heavier than the plastic bag but not too heavy like a small toy(Who else would make a better candidate than a fire service man? ;-)).

• Now, loosely tie the rope around the plastic bag and throw it as high as possible. It will be better if you can throw it from a higher level.
• Voila!!! Your Paratrooper should have safely landed by now! 😀 Have fun!!
• Please refer to the video for clarifications.

Further Experiments – What happens if you don’t tie anything at the end of the parachute or tie something that doesn’t weigh much, like a pipe cleaner? – What happens if you tie something much heavier?