Parachute Landing

     Four-wheelers can be fun, but nothing quite compares to the experience of being jerked to an abrupt stop by a parachute made from a tarp after traveling in excess of 45mph. For this experiment, we used an old 400cc Polaris four-wheeler. The parachute is about 15'x15' square. The first day that we tried this, the wind was blowing about 40mph and we would deploy the chute at a ground speed of about 35mph. The force of this was enough to lift the rear-end of the 1000lb+ four wheeler off of the ground and stop it in less than 15 feet, then pull it backwards. So powerful was the drag of that chute, that when it drifted into the adjacent field of 3-foot high soybeans, it ripped a 10x20-foot swath of beans out by their roots and deposited them in a heaping pile on our runway. This was one of the most fun rides that we've ever made. Look out for the road ditches, though. :-)