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Unread 28-11-2007, 23:20
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Re: Naked Egg Drop- Any Experience?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arefin Bari View Post
Use two piece of computer paper to make a "cone" or "rocket." Use 1 computer paper to surround the egg and use the 2 piece of computer paper and make a "cushion" around the cone (on the pointy side).

When you drop the cone, point it down. As the pointy side hits the floor, the pointy side will take the impact. As long as you can securely place the egg, it shouldn't crack.

I had a similar project to do back in my sophomore year in high school, but I was allowed to use newspaper. I dropped it from the 5th floor, it didn't crack. Try it out and let us know how it went.

As for the other project, try using the memory foam like Arkorobotics suggested.
Arefin, Naked Egg Drop. Nothing on the egg, all absorbing material below it.

That said, there's one over-arching design contraint. Your egg will be falling at ~11.7 m/s at impact, and you'll have to decelerate it at around 70g's for a 10cm stop and 140g's for a 5cm stop. At least. This is an absolute, even if you're trying to deflect the egg and have it come shooting out the side, since you have to arrest the downward velocity no matter what.
So you best is probably to absorb all the energy directly. This is the buckwheat hull, chocolate pudding strategy. This is easy to understand and implement. You can take some advantage of the strength of an eggshell under well distributed pressure. You'll be able to make a very wide landing pad for easy aiming. However, I think you'll discover that as your drop height increases, the thickness of absorbing material you need will increase linearly with it. That is, twice the height = twice the pudding.

Anyways, pulling off something like that is mostly just a matter of trial, error, and a decent plumb bob for aiming. I think there might be much better, much more amusing options depending on just how specific those rules are. Yes, we're talking loopholes now. My first thought is whether air counts as something touching your egg. If not, a blast of air could extend well upwards of 10cm to start gradually decelerating the egg well ahead of time. I'm basically thinking of the nifty physics demo you see in science museums of tennis balls hovering over very noisy traffic cones. In your case, if air doesn't count, you could actually make a 7 meter tall wind tunnel with probably 2 leaf blowers attached to levitate your egg. Expensive? Yes. Complicated? You betcha. Worth it to see your egg float 7 meters down to the ground to land softly on a gilded 4cm tall pillow? Well you'd have to be the judge of that.
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