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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
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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.

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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.