Egg Drop Challenge

What is the egg drop?

      The egg drop was a design challenge in which students were given two opportunities to create a system to keep an egg uncracked when dropped from a certain height. In the first phase, students were given limited materials including straws, paper, foam, and string. In the second phase, students were allowed unlimited materials. 

What were the technological concepts?

• Power
• Energy
• Gravity
• Function

What were the learning goals?

• Using a design matrix
• Relating it to the real world (crash test dummies)
• Having an uncracked egg at 5 meters
• Learning to calculate force, velocity, and inertia

What were our designs?

    Our project had two iterations. The first one resembled a lunar lander with three feet and a little parachute attached to the top. Our second design was a little easier to build and less complex. It was a tissue box with bubble wrap and little bags of air surrounding the egg inside. 

Positive Feedback

    I really enjoyed this project. It was a fun challenge and working with both limited and unlimited materials was also a nice contrast between the improvements that can come from having more resources. Our second device definitely worked better for two reasons; we had more experience and more materials at our disposal. 

Redesign Reflections

    Looking back on it now, there are a couple more changes I would make to our final design. First, I would have a bigger box for more protective insulation inside. Second, I would have distributed the weight better as to make sure the design landed on the side we wanted it to. 

Technological resources

• 2 straws
• 1 pipe cleaner
• 18" of string
• 4 paperclips
• 2 sheets of paper
• 2  rubber bands 
• 1 index card
• 2 popsicle sticks
• 1 foam pad
• glue
• tape

What was the biggest challenge?

    Our biggest challenge came from figuring out how to design the project when we had limited materials. We had a couple disagreements and we couldn't decide on the best solution for our design, even with our design matrix. We eventually figured out what to do, but even then, our egg didn't survive up to 5 meters. 

What did we learn?

    I learned that having more materials and a bit of experience at our disposal, it's much easier to design a working and functioning model. Our second egg drop device worked much better than our first one and actually survived the big drop. I also learned that having more people to help build and brainstorm can be a big advantage as well.