[Kris Verdeyen]

A guy I know always likes to talk about an egg drop contest he saw in college. The winner was the egg that fell from the highest floor without breaking, with tiebreakers decided by flight time (the shorter the better).

The design that won was a steel tube, capped at one end, filled with a viscous fluid. The tube had fins along the back, looked somewhat like an upside down rocket, and was very heavy. To use it, you simply floated the egg on the fluid, and let the beast go. The only problem was that when the "rocket" landed, it would bury itself (bomb-style) in a concrete courtyard. After three or four drops resulting in three or four successively bigger holes (but no broken eggs), the contest judges finally decided to award the designer the prize, as long as he didn't drop it anymore.