Egg Drop Contest

[Gadget470]

A really cool looking and easy way to do this is with either normal printer paper or with straws.

Roll the paper or use straws to make the edges for an open 8x8x8 cube.
Secure corners with masking tape.
Make a smaller cube with rolled paper or straws to hold the egg.
Wrap egg in tissue paper to make it fit better into the small cube.
From the corners of each cube, place an S Shaped paperclip ("open" the paper clip to an S shape)
From each clip then place a small rubber band. Band should be small enough to be pulled tight at the distance, but not near breaking.

all in all, it should look vaugly something like this:

 _______
|\     /|
| \___/ |
| |EGG| |
| /¯¯¯\ |
|/     \|
 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

The rubber bands create a pretty good quality suspension sytem, preventing th egg from ever feeling the full force of the impact with the ground.

Works great if part of the challange is speed of drop. (Parachutes = Slower)

[R2K2D2]

This is one way that I have done this in the past. Take some long durable straws. Put rubber bands around your egg and then place the straws all around your egg and either tie them together or use rubberbands to constrain them. So basically, you will have this spikey ball (made from the straws jutting out in different directions, with the ball in the center. I have dropped this from a very high staircase and it worked perfectly. The straws will take all the impact and crumple, if needed, and the egg will be safe. The straws allow the structure to bounce and be impact resistant.

[c-squared_2006]

Well, please let us know how you did!

[Pat Roche]

Wrap lots of bubble wrap and duct tape on it....thats what they pack things with for shipping...must work..

-Pat

[Duke 13370]

When i did this i used a less dense padding around the egg, then a slightly more stiff layer then another layer, and so on for like 3 more layers. It fit in a box about the size you needed, after dropping it 30 feet easily, we played a quick game of football with it until someone drop kicked the box. it got messy then.

it might have been bigger. meh! whatever

[Gabriel]

I had to do this once. I was thinking about designing a parachute and some airbags, but after thinking a long time I found the PERFECT mechanism. Here are the step-by-step instructions

1. Go to your school's mailroom and get a box for an empty ream of copier paper.
2. Go around to all the laser printers and collect as much standard 8 1/2 x 11 paper as you can. Reams of paper where the pages are attached work the best.
3. Put half a ream of paper in the bottom of the box. Put egg on top, put the other half ream on top of that.
4. If you have any extra room fill it with bricks. Your whole school building is probably made of bricks and chances are they can spare a few.
5. Obtain a sharpie or other permanent marker.
6. Using letters several inches high name your creation "THE PHOENIX"

[Aignam]

I know for a fact that there are archived threads about this exact topic. Do a search and see if you get any good ideas.

[Matt_Kaplan1902]

Thanks for all your suggestions. I used a slightly modified version of Greg Needel's idea.

If you were wondering my egg did survive and got 3rd place in my class. Thanks again for all your help.

[Ryan Dognaux]

I had to do this, and I just taped 2 sponges together... worked fine, but it was a bit too bouncy.

[pryoplasm]

Originally Posted by Gabriel

I had to do this once. I was thinking about designing a parachute and some airbags, but after thinking a long time I found the PERFECT mechanism. Here are the step-by-step instructions

1. Go to your school's mailroom and get a box for an empty ream of copier paper.
2. Go around to all the laser printers and collect as much standard 8 1/2 x 11 paper as you can. Reams of paper where the pages are attached work the best.
3. Put half a ream of paper in the bottom of the box. Put egg on top, put the other half ream on top of that.
4. If you have any extra room fill it with bricks. Your whole school building is probably made of bricks and chances are they can spare a few.
5. Obtain a sharpie or other permanent marker.
6. Using letters several inches high name your creation "THE PHOENIX"

XD XD XD

[deltacoder1020]

lol @ Gabriel

it's more fun when you have to do a naked egg drop - that is, build a catcher instead of a container. catchers ranked by highest drop successfully caught first, height of the catcher itself second. (have a set number of drop heights so someone doesn't build a yard-tall catcher and simply out-drop everyone - a big emphasis here is on making a short catcher). I did this one year and caught an egg from eight meters with a 10cm tall catcher. that was fun

[Dave Vivecian]

I thought naked egg drop was something you did off the diving board skinny dipping at night in the neighbors pool...
lol


the best "naked egg drop" though is when your only allowed paper, tape, and straws

We did this in about 5th grade and i made a box that sortof resembled this years goals, and put shreded paper filling the inside except on the inside of the pungie pit type thing
______
| . ' . |
|.egg.|
| ' . ' |
-------

then with paper on the outside of that ring and inside of the box
also tape rolls on the inside edge of the ring so when it fell in it wouldnt bounce out

then i used gabriel's method and it was kewl but i named mine "Back to Hates"


hehe




Dave

[deltacoder1020]

what height did you get from it?