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Best way to have an egg drop 15 feet and SURVIVE

Bulldog13

Bulldog13

Golden Member
I got a call from my little cousin about one of his school projects. Basically, the have to devise a mechanism for dropping an egg 15 feet, having it land in a smallish circle (not sure on the size), and have it not break.

I figured I would turn to ATOT to see what everyone here did when they had that project. My best idea was a smallish parachute and sticking it in a plastic jar of peanut butter. I don't really remember what I did when I was younger.

Thoughts ?
 
I've personally seen this work. Bag of doritos, insert egg in said bag, drop bag, remove egg.


dam(eg)
 
When I did mine.. I had a weight limitation on it. So you might want to check on that. Parachute would work.. except you will be way off target as the wind will blow it off its course.

My device was cone shaped with a thick paper plate (or cardboard) on the top. Kinda like this...

--------------
\ /
\ /
\ /
\/

then I placed the egg in the center and packed with newspaper. It survived its fall and was a little bit off its course.

Just for the fun of it I also built one with jello in box. It was wayy over the weight limit but I want to see if an egg placed in the jello would survive the fall. Unfortunately it did not survive the impact. But it was an awesome and messy sight though.
 
You have three options:
1) Slow the velocity of the impact (wings, parachute, helicopter blade, etc)
2) Soften the impact (cushins, energy absorbing items that break instead, etc)
3) Combine the two above.

Since you have to drop it in a precise location #1 and #3 are probably out. For example, if it is a windy day, the parachute could take you far off course. Thus you are left with #2.

From there, you have an infinite number of possibilites from roll cages to corn flakes.
 
Originally posted by: keeleysam
Tell him to do his own damn homework. 😉

Personally, I just put it in a big foam ball, and it worked.
Click to expand...

I did engineering in college so I'm always the one who gets these calls. 😉 I've tried to explain to them a few times that software engineering and mechanical engineering are two different things. 😉
 
I had good luck using a thin plastic parachute about 15" in diamter, and suspending from it about four "bubbles" of bubble wrap forming a cup for the egg.

I got my design down to seven grams, and sucessfully dropped an egg from 25'.

 
definitely depends on the limits of the assignment. we had to do it using only paper and we had a weight limit and a limit on the amount of paper.
 
You're allowed to use parachutes? That's pretty lame. Plus it's only 15 feet, that's not bad at all. I had to drop mine off the back of the school bleachers, which are approximately 45 feet. I made a box out of poster paper, filled it with cotton, put it inside the middle. Then, I put small water balloons on the outside of that poster paper box, and put it inside a bigger poster paper box (only 7x7x7 though). You see, the balloons, being inside the bigger box, gave it controlled cushioning, and no matter which way it fell, not only was it cushioned, but the net force of the fall was lessened by the friction created between the balloons on the side and the outer box. My egg didn't even move.
 
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