Egg Drop Extravaganza

by : Nick S.

 
Intro In this experiment my class and I created cases that were supposed to hold a regular egg and not let it break once dropped off of the top of our school bleachers. The goal of the project was to increase the time of impact for the egg by creating a case for the egg. Since all of the impulses were the same, if the time of impact was increased then the force of impact had to be decreased.
Design My egg case was designed in a standard shoebox, there were 3 t-shirts and one sweatshirt in my shoebox. I curled the egg in the cushioned sleeve of the sweatshirt and put 2 t-shirts on the bottom and 1 on top of the sweatshirt concealing the egg.
Did It break?

My egg broke. The reason why my egg case wasn’t successful was because it decreased the time of impact on the egg, therefore increasing the force on the egg inside the case. Using T- shirts was definitely the downfall to my case. The structure and thickness of t-shirts allowed a lot of force to get directly to my egg. Because of gravity, the time of impact is decreased. That in turn increases the force acting on the egg when the case hits on the ground.

Yum scrambled eggs
Reflecting If I could have improved my design the second time I would have changed the inside to styraphome rather than T-shirts. I also would have taped the egg to the edges of the shoebox to stop it from moving.
Real World Examples

This experiment is used every day in sports and professional athletes jobs. Moto X riders have shocks in the front fork of the bike to decrease the force of impact and therefore ride out the tough landings so the wheels don’t break. Long Jumpers bend their knees when landing their jump to decrease the force of impact rather than landing stiff legged so their knees don’t snap. When a boxer gets hit by there opponent they move there head and body, this is called riding with the punch, this also decreases the force of impact and therefore allows them to take twice as many punches and not get K.Oed. Professional divers run and jump off the diving board with only slightly bent knees they do this so that there knees don’t take all the bounce from the board out but still keeps the balanced and tosses them in the air therefore they want the impact to be greatest so they have more time to spin in the air if there jump is greater. Skateboarders do large jumps over structures that require a lot of knee bending this is because when someone ollies the pop off the ground level out in the air and land flat and if your 3 feet in the air it wont feel to good if you come crashing down all stiff legged so skateboarders bend their knees to decrease the force of impact for a clean landing and no injuries.
Back to other Student Webpages