Egg Drop Write-up

Garg 1 Rishi Garg Mr. McQueen Physics, 5th Period 9 October 2007 Egg Drop Write-Up My egg drop project, created collaboratively with Aaron Halim, was the product of much hard work and effort. It took at least five hours to create and perfect. The age-old saying of “the end justifies the means” is completely true in the case of my project, because in the final test, the egg survived the 30-foot drop. We started with the fact that eggs are extremely strong when force is applied only to the top. The sides and back are vulnerable, but the top is so strong that a person can walk on a carton of eggs. We took that fact and decided to have the egg fall straight down, so that it would land on its top. I found the cardboard part of a toilet paper roll, and thought that the egg would fit perfectly into it. I then cut part of a tissue box so that, when rolled a certain way, it would form a cone to put on the top of the toilet paper roll. Aaron taped the cone and the cylinder together, in order to form a sort of missile. We then dropped the “missile” from my deck onto the patio, which was about 15 feet below. We found that the missile did not fly straight down; instead, it turned sideways about halfway through its flight. I then had the idea to attach fins to the missile in order to stabilize it during flight. Aaron cut out three fins from the tissue box, and attached them to the missile. The

Garg 1 fins were slightly tilted so that the missile would spin during flight, thus stabilizing it even further. We dropped it from my deck again, and found that our modifications worked; the missile flew straight down. The last thing we did was insert cut-up pieces of a car washing sponge into the cone of the missile, so that when it dropped with the egg inside, the sponge would cushion the egg’s impact. Just before dropping our device, we wrapped the given egg in more cut-up car wash sponge, so that the shock from the collision would not travel directly into the egg. Instead, we hoped that the sponge would absorb and spread the vibrations, so that the egg would receive minimal shock. We then taped the back of the missile so that the egg would not accidentally exit the device in mid-flight. The measured length and weight of the device was 14 cm and 39 g, respectively. The fireman held our device a different way from the way Aaron and I had been holding it, but I decided that it would be fine. During its flight, the missile turned a negligible amount; it was not enough to bother me, because the fins were still keeping it facing downward. It landed on its cone, which was the way that we had intended. The drop time was measured to be about 1.229 seconds. After opening the device, we found that the egg was indeed unharmed. Although the device had been dropped slightly differently from the way we had hoped, our plan had been successful. We achieved a score of 14.9.

Garg 1 After reviewing our entire process, Aaron and I decided that there was much room for improvement. We had hoped to get first place in terms of score, but we had only received second place. I believed that most of the length of the cylinder had not been used, and that if we had cut it off, we could have had a shorter length. Aaron guessed that if we had used less duct tape, or a tape that weighed less, we could have had a smaller weight. Also, we both thought that if we had made the fins and cone slightly smaller, the weight of the entire device would have been reduced without compromising functionality. In conclusion, Aaron and I believe our process and design involved a decent amount of scientific principles. Since it was our first time building such a device, we took extra precautions in order to ensure the survival of the egg. Through the process this project, we learned a lot of useful principles having to do with falling objects. If we ever had to do it again, we would definitely have more ideas.