Egg Drop Challenge Project: Competition Day!

Yesterday we had our final competition day for our Egg Drop Challenge project. The container created by my partner and myself had an official final mass of 321.10 g, with dimensions of 24 cm x 24 cm x 24 cm. Our egg drop container took 0.94 seconds to complete the 5 m fall. Once our egg has landed we found out it survived- with the shell completely intact! As a result of our container's relatively high mass, our container received a score of 62.29 for its earned egg points.

High anxiety on Competition day!

Nick with our egg! Sweet success!

A view of the inside of our egg drop container. The egg was contained within the inner container.

I felt that the most limiting restriction during the design phase of my container was the size dimension restriction. My group chose to incorporate an elastic band suspension system into our container. We felt that to optimize our suspension system, a container as large as possible would be best. A large container would provide ample space for the suspended egg container (the smaller internal container) to move around in, without colliding with the ground or the external container. A large external container would provide a large amount of space for the inner container to be suspended within, preventing a great amount of collisions with the external container, due to the increased space between the two containers. Due to the 25 cm x 25 cm x 25 cm dimension limitation, we had to overcome the restriction that our container could not be as large as possible.

 The most effective part of our design was the suspension system itself. We chose to incorporate the suspension system into our design because we knew it would reduce the impact of the force on the egg when our container hit the floor. The suspension system prevented the small internal egg container from hitting the ground and the larger external container. When the container hit the floor the small suspended egg container did not come in contact with any surface, and simply bobbed up and down, suspended by the stretchy elastics. This greatly reduced any impact experienced on the egg when the container hit the floor.

The least effective part of our container's design was the material we chose to create our container out of. We chose to use a relatively dense and heavy cardboard to make our container. If we had chosen to use a lighter cardboard, plastic or styrofoam, we not only would have increased our earned egg points, but it is probable that the container would have fallen less quickly, due to it's reduced mass. A slower fall time would have likely reduced the force with which the container came in contact with the floor, reducing the forces on the egg, that have the potential to cause it to break.

In order adapt our container to safely carry two raw eggs I would add an small box adjacent to the small box suspended within the large external container. This would take the basic principles of our original container and apply them to carrying two raw eggs. The only significant adjustments that would be needed would be to adjust the tension of the suspension elastics (because the two square based containers would combine to create a rectangle based container). To achieve these tension differences, my group would have to investigate the proper tension for the two different side lengths, in order to make both eggs survive and for the suspension system to work as it is intended to.