I have a physics project where I need to drop a grade-A large egg from 7 meters into a “catcher” The catcher has no restrictions except that the first thing the egg touches cannot be over 10 cm high. I get extra points for a working catcher under 5 cm. No points if egg bounces and breaks on concrete or for missing the catcher. No hard-boiled eggs.
Any experience shared would be appreciated. I would like to cut down on research and development time if possible. I have until 3-21-06 to complete this.
My thoughts;
choclate pudding
sheet with small weights on corners draped over a 10cm box-possibly with a low density foam instead of a bottom, just sidewalls on box.
Soak egg in a solution rendering it more elastic-last option.
Ever see how stuntmen jump off 3 and 4 story buildings, as if they were Bruce Willis? The human body is very much “the egg” in these stunts.
They basically have a bag of air that the stuntman jumps onto, but it has openings as well that allow the air to escape quickly enough that he isn’t hitting a solid surface, but slowly enough so it cushions him and absorbs the energy before he hits the ground. You’ve got to figure out what the proper flow rate out of the bag is, so all energy is dissipated as the egg finally reaches the ground.
we did one but not 7m high. we had to have it on a rubber band car and launch it off a table. i used a balloon, the kind you twist into animals and stuff. twisted it around under the egg worked perfectly.
but in your case i think its too bouncy. tempurpedic is also a great idea my friend used. free sample chunk if you call to ask about it or sumthing. call a couple times lol.
Hey! I did this for Science Olympiad back in high school. We won the regional competetion and placed fairly well at the state competition (Indiana), probably would have done better if my partner would have not gotten nervous and completely missed the target towards the end…
Anyways, we used buckwheat, like the inside of the Sabakawa (however it’s spelled) pillow from back in the day. Wow. Add me to the list of “we’re feeling old.”
PS- a good and easy way to make an egg more elastic is to soak the egg(s) in vinegar (plain white will do) for at least 3 days. Just be careful and make side walls- it’ll bounce like a ball (this was my 5th grade science experiment). Also, I never dropped the vinegar egg from higher than 3 meters, so you might ant to test that…
MEMORY FOAM! Well I was apart of something similar to this. Where you had to make a surrounding for an egg which you put the egg inside it and droped it from 30 feet. I made mine a box and inside it was a bunch of memory foam (developed by NASA ) http://www.compukiss.com/ewebeditpro2new/upload/Memory%20foam%20imprint.jpg
I worked great for me. I just call a bunch a companies that sell this stuff, and they sent the form samples (4" by 4" by 1")
Ok, Here is what I found that worked for me. I was limited on time etc. so I just used stuff from my garage, fortunately I’ve been doing construction lately and happened to have some 3.5" fiberglass insulation, lumber and plastic.
I cut a cardboard box to 10cm. high, laid 3.5" fiberglass inside, then I cut a piece of 2 mil plastic about three feet longer than each end of the box. I laid the plastic over the box of fiberglass, laid two 2X8 pieces of lumber over the excess plastic, wrapped the plastic around the 2X8’s and pulled the plastic taut. I dropped a jumbo egg from 30 feet and made it on the first try.
When the egg hit the plastic, the boards moved slightly toward the box and slowed the egg down enough for the fiberglass to finish the job. The very light 2 mil plastic helped too. The variable here would be how heavy the boards are, extra weight may be needed depending on the species and dimention of the lumber used.
Thanks for all you ideas, I didn’t use up too much of my spring break working on it. If this initial try hadn’t worked I was going to make an airbag system with a variable speed 12v. blower :ahh: that would have been a big pain in the… and if the air bag didn’t work I was going to soak the eggs in vinegar. And if that didn’t work I’m not sure what I was going to do cuz I didn’t have time to send off for memory foam, I guess I would have been eating scrambled eggs!
I have a physics experiment to use only 5 sheets of regular computer paper and 1 meter of masking tape to build something to hold a raw egg and drop it from 10 feet and then drop it from almost 30 feet. Whichever model can prevent the egg from cracking at all, and has the overall lowest mass wins and receives more points for the project. Any possibility anybody can suggest any ideas?
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.
Because that was sooooooooo popular in actual competition in '06 to deflect balls from the overhead goals. :rolleyes:
Nice in theory, but I never saw it used in competition.
As far as my suggestion, I would use the styrafoam based “beans” in a bean bag chair.
You just need to find the right amount that will actually stop the Egg before it hits the bottom of the container you put it in.
Think of CSI’s rendition of a ballistics test: Not the gel based one most are familar with, but a chamber with beads that stops the velocity in a short distance but doesn’t damage the actual bullet.
The chamber is filled with non-flammable Kevlar® fibers. The useful life of the fibers is approximately 10,000 shots. **The bullet is trapped undamaged in these fibers. **
If this is indeed not the naked drop but a standard egg drop… Arefin’s method works well! When we recently did this, the students also reserved 1 1/2 of the pieces of paper and formed a parachute using strips of paper to attach the sheet of paper to the wide end of the cone at 4 to 6 locations. They then held it by the center of the parachute to launch. Multiple teams used versions of the same designs and as long as the eggs stayed in the cone, they never broke. (Higher and Higher and Higher!) :ahh: The judges finally had all the teams with a parachute remove the parachute and drop just the cones to determine the winner. :rolleyes:
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