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Posted by Travis Covington.

Student on team #115, MV ROBOTICS, from Monta Vista High School and Hitachi Data Systems - 3com - NASA Ames.

Posted on 5/5/2000 12:12 AM MST


In Reply to: looking to help with the egg posted by Erin on 4/25/2000 7:05 PM MST:



Thanks for the help everyone.
(and sorry for the long message...its good tho)

Our physics classes have finished the eggdrop project and have come through with some record breaking results.
First of all id like to say thank you to everyone for all the advice (i told my whole class to read the postings and they really appreciated all of them)

Although I did not follow through w/ any of the ideas posted, my friends at school and on the team did, and created great vehicles that worked and weighed only 10-15 grams. My approch was to make the vehicle entirely out of 1 single piece of printer paper (5 grams or less) So I started thinking, and came up with something simple...A cone!

---If anyones intrested, this is how I did it ---
I made a paper cone about 6 in high out of the corner triangle of the printer paper. With the remaining paper I made a ring type thing that slid over the cone, and acted as a wind break to slow the vehivle down as well as keeping it straight. I then made a small cone out of lightweight foam, about an inch t high, and stuffed it down the cone as well as making a foam stopper for the top of the cone. Finally I put as many lightning holes as you can imagine in the areas of the vehicle that would not be affected by the impact.
TOTAL WEIGHT (w/ out egg): 3.9 Grams
When i weighed it at school I was amazed at how much weight i took off by adding the lightning holes.

The test went well too! the vehicle came straight down about as slow as necsesarry. After the impact the egg was undamaged.

My vehicle at 3.9 grams became the new record in my class as well as in my physics teachers career (10 years)

There were also 2 people who broke the record as well w/ a 5 gram vehicle (also a cone) and an 8.5 gram vehicle (again a cone). And the coolest thing is they were members of our robotics team. Cool HUH?

If any one has questions about our egg drop feel free to ask.

And once again thanks for the help everyone!

Travis Covington
-Happy Physics student