Dropping an egg from 2 meters without the egg breaking.
Aim: to drop an egg from a height of 2 meters without the egg breaking.
Using materials that are easy to find and inexpensive.
From this project I hope to learn what kinds of materials that are cheap and available are most protective of brittle, delicate eggshells.
Research: looking into what kinds of materials there are available that could possibly work. Each member of the group was given time to come up with one idea of what would protect an egg upon contact with the ground from a drop of 2 meters. The different techniques chosen: clay casing, cotton wool and pads, soft toy, polystyrene balls and in a t-shirt being worn.
Technique 1: modeling clay wrapped around the egg
Materials: modeling clay
Molding the clay around the egg to protect the shell from breaking
Result: broken egg, the clay as it hit the ground changed in shape from the impact, this put pressure on the egg and therefore the egg cracked and broke inside the clay casing. To make this work the clay should be thicker or within the clay casing and around the egg another softer layer should have been made so as to protect the egg on impact with the ground.
Technique 2: cotton wool and cotton pads taped around the egg
Materials: Cotton wool balls
Plaster pads
Cello tape
Placing the cotton pads and wool balls around the egg and taping them to create a cushion.
Result: broken egg, the egg cracked from the impact with the ground as the cotton wool and pads lost their cushion when taped down to the egg, the fluffy and softness became more compact and not a soft surface for the egg to be protected. To make this work the cotton wool would have to be layered many times but not compacted and taped strongly to each layer. Leaving space and the cotton wool soft so as to protect the egg on impact.
Technique 3: cutting open a soft toy and placing the egg inside
Materials: Soft toy
Cutter
Cutting open a soft toy for there to be enough space inside to place the egg and close up the opening.
Result: broken egg, the padding inside the soft toy used was too little to protect the egg from breaking. The toy itself was also small and didn’t provide enough padding upon impact. To make this technique successful using a larger soft toy may work, but also the padding inside different soft toys differ.
Technique 4: placing the egg into a bag of polystyrene balls
Materials: Plastic bag
Rubber band
Polystyrene balls
Placing the egg into a bag of polystyrene balls of a small size and closing the bag with a rubber band.
Result: success!!! The polystyrene balls protected the egg from the impact with the ground. The small balls when impact is pushed upon them, like the impact with the ground, move around but do not impose pressure on other parts, the egg, as the balls are small, therefore protecting the egg and cushioning the impact with the ground successfully.
Technique 5: wrapping the egg in a t-shirt and jumping from a height of 2 meters
Materials: t-shirt
Person
Wrapping the egg into persons t-shirt when the t-shirt is being worn, then jumping from a height of 2 meters.
Result: successful… but the idea is too silly to write about. And the competitor who though up this idea happened to drop the egg upon landing, therefore from an actual success it became a fail.
Conclusion: what I learned from this project is that materials though they seem to be protective, sometimes soft sometimes harder don’t protect as well as things that are made mostly of air. Polystyrene is 2% plastic and 90% air but the polystyrene balls in a bag were the best protection for the egg in this test. Clay, a solid and firm-ish material was not protective of the eggs brittle shell. Cotton wool was squashed and the air was pushed out of it making the cushion harder than we hoped. The shape of the polystyrene balls also helped, the shape made the balls roll around upon contact, not apply pressure to the egg, unlike the other materials used. Polystyrene balls are commonly found in packaging boxes when shipping goods around, this is understandable as from our results they work well.
If we were to do this project again we world put more detail into each of our ideas to come up with more likely to succeed ideas. Some of our ideas were a little too simple and we were just hoping that they would work. If proper thought went into each experiment then more complicated designs would have maybe worked better.
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