Drop an Egg 10m Without Breaking: Physics Principles

[roflwaffle]

Homework Statement

drop an egg ~10m without it breaking

Homework Equations

1/2mv2 and mgh :)

The Attempt at a Solution

i was thinking would the egg break if i suspended the egg in a container of liquid of the same density as the eggshell. I've been thinking about this conceptually with pressure waves and whatnot, but i don't know the necessary physics principles that would allow me to prove if this would work or not.

yes or no answers acceptable, but explanations would be nice, improvement or alternative ideas are even better!can some admin move this to intro-physics, b/c that's where this should be

 

[Kevin_Axion]

Put it in a box of foam assuming there isn't any weight restrictions, the idea isn't original but it always works the best. My team designed a contraption with a outer frame and elastics to dampen the momentum. It worked quite well but if you add too many parameters then the entire system is too difficult to manage and the factors cause too many problems.

 

[roflwaffle]

i can't use any commercial padding. so foam is out of the question, unless i make it.

 

[gb7nash]

If a little parachute is easy to make, I would totally do that.

 

[Kevin_Axion]

A parachute won't create enough air resistance considering you would have to cut a circle in the center to allow for an air stream to pass through therefore stabilizing it as it probably has to land on a target. Another one that works is getting construction paper and roll it into a conical shape, put the egg in a padded box and then within the cone. Place it farthest away from far the "apex" of the cone. The force on collision should be absorbed by the paper and the aerodynamics should allow it to travel without much drag. The downside is that you will experience more force on collision but the paper should work, construction paper is the best.

 

[andresordonez]

Drop it along an inclined plane!

No, seriously, maybe you could make something like a mini skate ramp (very smooth) that turns really slow so the velocity goes from vertical to horizontal, and then you could put a little pool of water or something like that to stop the egg. I'm thinking of something like the way you are stopped at the end of a water slide. You could also put some peanut butter or something like that in the ramp to stop the egg. Beware that the ramp should be as tall as possible to make the turn as slow as possible and the drop of the egg should be very precise (use a plumb line and avoid windy places!), so as to avoid the egg crashing with the ramp.

Something else that could go wrong during the fall is that the egg starts spinning in the middle of the air or something like that (the egg is not spherical) so I guess you should determine the orientation of the egg for which it doesn't start spinning in mid air (if possible). Yet another problem would be that once it lands on the ramp it starts lurching, this could be fixed making the ramp very slippery with oil or something like that.

I have no experience at all with this egg dropping business, but after seeing some videos on youtube it seems that this is not the usual way to do it (maybe cause no one thought about it before or maybe just because it's more difficult hehe), so I guess it would be for the better of experimental physics (even if if totally fails)! It's kinda boring to do it the same way over and over don't you think?

 

[skeptic2]

It seems to me that before you begin a project like this you need to know how many G's it takes to break the egg. Then you can start designing something that won't exceed that value.