March 27th, 2017 | by

In the same way temperature variations change air density to cause a paratrooper to descend more quickly or slowly, data quality can either increase or decrease drag for sales and marketing teams. DiscoverOrg Director of Product Marketing, Justin Withers discusses the impact of bad data and how to maximize data quality

When I was in sixth grade, my father—an engineer, businessman, and physics teacher—helped me design an experiment for a school project. Central to the experiment was a paratrooper. Not a real one, but one of those plastic ones you can get out of those little vending machines. We conducted our first test at our neighborhood Costco, where we somehow managed to get access to one of their giant industrial freezers (you know…where they keep the bags of those delicious cream puffs). Once inside, we commenced our experiment by repeatedly dropping the paratrooper in the frigid air, each time clocking how long it took for it to fall to the ground. After we felt we had enough data, we repeated the test at a nearby fitness club sauna.

Here’s what I learned. It turns out that paratroopers fall slower in cold air. Why? Well, sparing you the details of the Ideal Gas Law, cold air is denser. In other words, more air molecules funnel into the parachute, slowing its fall. By contrast, higher temperatures result in less air density and reduce drag on the paratrooper accelerating his fall.

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Claire McEachern
About the author

Claire McEachern

Claire has 15+ years of creative communications, digital marketing, account and project management expertise in both the B2B and B2C environments. She has a passion for merging technical and creative skills in order to create narratives that educate, entertain, and call-to-action audiences on both the prospect and customer sides of the house. She has a B.S. in Sociology from James Madison University and an M.S. in Sustainable Design from Philadelphia University.