By Cody T.
Purpose of experiment:
The purpose of this experiment was to create and egg case that will increase the time of impact and decrease the force of impact, so that the egg will not break when it falls from school bleachers onto grass!
Description of egg case:
My egg case was made mostly of plastic, stick-like legos, called K-nex. The egg was incased in a small Tupperware box, which was surrounded by a K-nex cage. Surrounding the egg was peanut butter. The egg case was equipped with special shock-absorbing
K-nex sticks that were designed to increase the time of impact on the contraption itself.
Results:
The good news is the egg did not break. But, the bad news, however, was that the egg case completely shattered as soon as it made impact with the grass. The egg did not break, thanks to the shock absorbers and the peanut butter. These two objects were able to increase the time of impact and decrease the force. These means that the change in momentum was small, which is good…well, for the eggs sake. This is because the impulse, which is the product of force and the elapsed time, evened out when the case came in contact with the grass. So, the shock absorbers, along with the peanut butter, were able increase the time of impact, decrease the force, therefore, allowing the egg to live another day.
Design:
After my experiment, I found a few ways on how I could improve my egg case design. However, I was very pleased with my original one. I think if I were to do this experiment again, (even though the egg did not break) I would increase the widths of my caging, which would make my case wider. This would leave less room for tilting, while in the air. It would also give the case a bigger base to land on. Some faults, I believe, in the experiment itself were the following: air resistance (may slow the egg case down while traveling to the ground), not an accurate mass measurement, not an accurate dropping distance, not an accurate time measurement, may have given some extra momentum (holding it over), not all eggs are perfect shaped or the same.