Egg Drop
By: Makayla Kozicki
Solving The Problem
The purpose of the egg drop was to build a contraption for an egg to safely land (without cracking) on the ground from a height of 50 feet. In the process it was definitely challenging, trying to figure a way to stop the egg from cracking from its fall we had to make many different adjustments. We first tried to make a parachute with a plastic bag and strings taped to a cup for the egg, but that didn't work because it was too light. To add more weight we put a piece of cardboard with the plastic bag which made it flat and made it go down faster since the air was pushing in an upward motion. To make sure the egg could survive the impact when it hit the ground we put packing peanuts and cotton balls inside 2 cups with a rubber band securing it closed. That had successfully worked.
His Name
My partner was Paige and the name of our egg is Sheldon. We decided on our name because when Paige was younger she filled up a rubber glove full of water and named it Sheldon.
Presentation Body
Attempting to solve the problem?
- We needed to make a contraption that could handle falling from a 50' drop off from a fire truck and to do that me and my partner decided to do that was by making a parachute for our egg because when it was dropped we wanted to make sure it had enough support so it wouldn't crack when it hit the ground.
Brainstorming how you think you will solve it?
- We thought of other ways we know of how other people/things have come down from being dropped or falling before and then decided with our materials which ones could we model and which one would be the most chance of being successful.
Choosing how to solve it?
- We chose to make ours like a parachute because we knew that we had the most chance of it working and me and my partner decided that it would be the least complicated way to make it so then we would have time to fix things on our contraption, make it better, and changing our design if we had to.
Explain why you choose the way you did?
- We made our contraption from previous knowledge of how things come down when they're dropped or if it were to fall such as a person, parachuting , they need something to hold their weight and yet not make them go down so that they fall to the ground and get hurt. Which was just like our task to build something an egg could be in while being dropped and not crack when reaching the ground. So we thought we would just build something like a parachute and use the egg for a substitute of a person.
How did you see if your design would work?
- Me and my partner experimented if our design would work or not by standing on top of a counter (our workspace) and dropping it from there with only a plastic egg with 5-6 marbles. If we found the marbles when we looked inside of the two put-together cups we knew we had to either give something more protection or change something on/about our design.
What adjustments or changes that you made to your idea and why?
- We had to make many adjustments to our idea such as instead of having the upper part more like a balloon; like a board to have a stronger down-force to go faster. Then me and my partner decided we needed to give the egg more protection because the first time we tried dropping it from our work space with a plastic egg and marbles inside it cracked open. So we then used the cotton balls and packing peanuts to protect it from the fall.
How your final design did?
- Our final design was successful, but we probably could've made it a little better by making it more sturdier which we could've done by adding our extra materials.
What changes or suggestions do you have if you were to do this again?
- Since our egg didn't crack after its fall from the fire truck, there isn't much changes or things different we would have done to our contraption except have more of the materials we were allowed to use.