Egg Drop Design Contest Rules & My Team's Design

[Rplanas]

I have an egg drop design contest. Here are the rules:

We have to drop the egg from classroom height (about 6 feet) and from gym height (about 13-15 feet). The capsule cannot weigh more than 550 grams and cannot exceed 7"x7"x7". The egg shell and the yolk have to survive. You are pretending that the egg is an astronaut. If more than one team out of five survives both tests, the lightest capsule wins. If there are two or more capsules who have the same weight, the smallest capsule wins. (Capsule doesn't mean hard capsule.)

My team made a design of the egg surrounded with thick bubble wrap tied to a parachute. It performed perfectly on the gym drop because the parachute has time to inflate. In the classroom drop, however, we had to rely on the bubble wrap to protect the egg since the parachute has no time to inflate. That design weighed 72.3 grams

I NEED BETTER IDEAS PLEASE!

 

[rocketboy]

What materials are you allowed to use?

 

[Rplanas]

Anything you can get and want to use. As long as you are within the requirements above.

 

[rocketboy]

You could try to make a type of suspension, maybe out of elastic bands and toothpics or sumthing. If built well this may absorb some of the impact. Earlier this year in my grade 11 physics class we had to build a cart that would carry an egg while accelerating wihtout the egg falling out or breaking when running over stuff. I built suspension out of elastic bands and it absorbed bumps fairly effectively.

You could also build something like what the Mars lander had, a kind of big bubble that absorbed impact upon landing. Perhaps the egg could be suspended in the middle of the bubble so that it is never in direct contact with the part of your device that hits the ground.

Hope this helps somewhat.

-Rocketboy

 

[Rplanas]

Thanks, rocketboy - whoever you are!

 

[minger]

Here's what I did for mine that I did a couple years back. You have to assume that whatever you do will work, and for me winning was top priority. I wasn't about to land without breaking then not win, so I went for low weight. I took an empty toilet paper roll and put some cotton in the bottom of it. For the top, I took two pieces of like poster board and made little "wings" out of them. The wings main purpose was to make sure it droped upright, but we angled them a little to make it spin and slow it down (they looked kinda like helicopter blades).

Anyways, we eventually won. There were three teams that made the final drop. The final drop was 5 stories by the way, so although the design sounds simple, it worked great! Well you can imagine how light ours was, and we won by weight by a LOT. Well that's what we did...

 

[AfricaFreak67]

Thats actually a good idea Minger...thanks..even though u weren't talkin to me...but yeah. but what if we can't use parachutes..and i don't know if we can use wings...then...can you answer that?!

 

[chelsNicoles]

Hi I am trying to figure out how to make an Egg Drop Project. It is due this friday. All i can use is 2litter bottles or water bottles, you can use the labels on them, and the lids. so pretty much anything on the bottle is usable. You can use scissors to cut the bottles up and hot glue or glue sticks to keep it together. you cannot use anything like you would usually use in these projects like toothpicks, tape, cotton balls, ect.. i really need help please leave me ideas soon!