How do I keep an egg from breaking ? PLEASE READ

[Mike Gayner]

That has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion. The velocity all along the path (up to and including the terminal velocity) will be lower with a lighter weight, given that all the other conditions are the same. Do you want to keep digging your hole?

Holy shit dude, this Aristotelian shit was debunked in the 16th century by Galileo. Seriously, wow.

 

[Sealy]

Funny...my son is doing an egg drop at school tomorrow too

We used his k'nex and built an octagon base and framed it up to a small hexagon at the top. We reinforced the joints with duct tape. We used elastic waist band stuff crossed together, in the middle where the egg will sit. The sides will be covered by packing tape so the egg can't fall out....kinda hard to explain Not sure if it'll work or not...but I guess we'll find out tomorrow!

 

[sdifox]

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/prototype-this/slide-show/slide-show-12.html

How about a propeller hooked up to some rubber bands as resistance?

 

[lord_emperor]

Glass milk bottle + jell-o.

Works and makes a hell of a cool mess.

 

[dullard]

Holy shit dude, this Aristotelian shit was debunked in the 16th century by Galileo. Seriously, wow.

Keep trying, you'll still be wrong. No one with any real physics education would agree with you. Try it. Prove yourself. Give us videos, equations, etc. Give us one shred of evidence that mass is unimportant when you include drag. I'll wait. Here is a hint: you can't prove your side because you are incorrect.

If we had a true vacuum, THEN you'd be correct. But that true vacuum doesn't exist in this situation.

The best you could do is to show that mass is a factor, but that the factor is small. In which case, you were still wrong in this thread but you'd at least learn a bit of physics.

 

[Jeff7]

Holy shit dude, this Aristotelian shit was debunked in the 16th century by Galileo. Seriously, wow.

In other news, all air was removed from Earth, in order to make physics easier for Mike Gayner to understand.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

 

[Gibson486]

This is why I love forum. There are always people who manage to over analyze everything.

Here, you have a problem: An elementry grade student is asked to design something. People chime in, have fun, but then you have these people who who go into raw detail about scientific fact. Argument ensues over the devil in detail. Come on people, lets not lose sight into the real thing here.....It's a grade school project. They will pass as long as their project shows that student made an effort to achieve a working design.

 

[Gibson486]

In other news, all air was removed from Earth, in order to make physics easier for Mike Gayner to understand.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

What about the breaking news story about the new unit of measurement: side wall pressure.

 

[dullard]

This is why I love forum. There are always people who manage to over analyze everything.

Here, you have a problem: An elementry grade student is asked to design something. People chime in, have fun, but then you have these people who who go into raw detail about scientific fact. Argument ensues over the devil in detail. Come on people, lets not lose sight into the real thing here.....It's a grade school project. They will pass as long as their project shows that student made an effort to achieve a working design.

You are correct, she will pass. But, if we didn't fight, you wouldn't enjoy ATOT nearly as much. I'm doing it for your pleasure (and mine). Educating Gayner is just a side benefit.

 

[TheStu]

My physics teacher in high school told us he did it by slathering a couple of dozen sheets of plastic wrap with peanut butter, the entire stack was maybe 6" high I think he said, but it absorbed the impact like kevlar.

This is different because it is being dropped in a cage, but as others have said, use something like peanut butter, marshmallow fluff, or a non-newtonian fluid.

 

[HomerSapien]

You guys have never done this? Soak the egg in vinegar and it will turn to rubber and you could chuck it off the roof. However, you may not have enough time if it is due tomorrow.

I just googled it and you would need a week unless you use hydrochloric acid in place of vinegar

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Egg in balloon.
Fill balloon with a thick gel (dishwasher gel perhaps, hair gel, THICK/VISCOUS).
Cone shaped crate made of construction paper.
Bottom inch of crate filled with sand.
Cover sand with glue.
Construction paper circle for top.
Egg in balloon in crate.
Glue top on.

A few rubber bands wrapped around the egg can't hurt.

Shock will be absorbed by the sand.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Educating Gayner is impossible.

They even kicked him out of hooked on phonics.

 

[SKORPI0]

How to survive egg drop

 

[Jeff7]

This is why I love forum. There are always people who manage to over analyze everything.

Here, you have a problem: An elementary grade student is asked to design something. People chime in, have fun, but then you have these people who who go into raw detail about scientific fact. Argument ensues over the devil in detail. Come on people, lets not lose sight into the real thing here.....It's a grade school project. They will pass as long as their project shows that student made an effort to achieve a working design.

Actually, I don't know that the grade was ever established.

 

[Gibson486]

You guys have never done this? Soak the egg in vinegar and it will turn to rubber and you could chuck it off the roof. However, you may not have enough time if it is due tomorrow.

I just googled it and you would need a week unless you use hydrochloric acid in place of vinegar

I am so doing this.....

 

[PottedMeat]

You guys have never done this? Soak the egg in vinegar and it will turn to rubber and you could chuck it off the roof. However, you may not have enough time if it is due tomorrow.

I just googled it and you would need a week unless you use hydrochloric acid in place of vinegar

maybe OP has a gallon of muriatic acid laying around. 31% by weight 20 degree baume - i forgot how to get this into molar concentration.

 

[rockyct]

Keep trying, you'll still be wrong. No one with any real physics education would agree with you. Try it. Prove yourself. Give us videos, equations, etc. Give us one shred of evidence that mass is unimportant when you include drag. I'll wait. Here is a hint: you can't prove your side because you are incorrect.

If we had a true vacuum, THEN you'd be correct. But that true vacuum doesn't exist in this situation.

The best you could do is to show that mass is a factor, but that the factor is small. In which case, you were still wrong in this thread but you'd at least learn a bit of physics.

As much as I think Gayner is a troll, I'm on his side in this case. Putting cereal instead of peanut butter (or whatever) in the same sized container (no bigger than 5"x5"x5") isn't going to make a significant effect on the velocity when we're talking 30 feet. He never said mass is irrelevant either. You extrapolated that on your own.

 

[apac]

You guys are doing it all wrong.

1. duct tape egg to oven, hot water heater, 60" TV, washing machine ...
2. hurl object from step 1 off 30 ft ledge
3. hilarity ensues

 

[DrPizza]

lmao @ both Dullard & Gayner.


OP: Suggestions - if you have a shrink wrap machine - hell, just put the egg in a ziplock bag and get all the air out of it (submerge it.) Cut the base off a 2-liter bottle, and cut it off near the top - keep it longer than 5" for now, you can trim it later.

Center the egg (inside the plastic bag) in the center of the 2-liter bottle and tape the edges of the bag to opposite sides of the 2-liter bottle. Put something over the bottom of the bottle & fill it with Great Stuff foam insulation.

Wait for the insulation to dry. Then, with a sharp utility knife, carefully cut down the opposite edges of the bottle where the plastic is. You should be able to split the whole thing into two halves, revealing the egg in the center of a perfect fitting coccoon. You could use this coccoon and a couple rubber bands to hold it together for the drop.

Major tip: not all brands of 2 liter bottles are identical in size, although it looks like they are. One brand's bottles will just barely slide into another brand's bottles when you've cut them off. (Sorry, off the top of my head, I don't remember which goes into which, but I *do* recall that you can find that info on Google.) Then, you can simply sandwich the egg between the two form fitting pieces of foam, and slide the whole thing into another bottle which will help put a little compression on the whole thing.

fwiw, when testing this method, prior to cutting open a bottle to unencase the egg from inside its shrinkwrap bag, the egg survived being spiked on the floor & survived being hit with a baseball bat.


Another method, look up "ooglick" or something like that. You want to create a very dilatent fluid - one which under different forces will turn into a solid. Suspend the egg in the center of such a fluid & it's like having it encased in concrete when it hits the ground. The pressure is relatively uniform around the egg, and it doesn't break. One material that works quite well for this is a very thick slurry made from corn starch. I saw an egg survive a roughly 100mph+ impact using this method. (My team's device in an engineering competition. Unfortunately, the other half of our device malfunctioned. Rather than launching our egg a few hundred feet in the air, our launching device when haywire & decided that rather than go up, it was going to follow a roughly parabolic path into the ground at max speed. Points were based on time + if our egg survived. I believe we set a record for length of path in the least time with a surviving egg.

 

[lxskllr]

I'd try something with drinking straws and rubber bands. They both should give enough shock resistance to survive a drop.

 

[slayer202]

As much as I think Gayner is a troll, I'm on his side in this case. Putting cereal instead of peanut butter (or whatever) in the same sized container (no bigger than 5"x5"x5") isn't going to make a significant effect on the velocity when we're talking 30 feet. He never said mass is irrelevant either. You extrapolated that on your own.

If you shape it correctly and keep the weight down, you should be able to easily get some decent drag compared to a heavy square. is it worth it? probably not. but you could do it

 

[Powermoloch]

steps:

1) Grab bubble wrap
2) Wrap egg
3) Use rubber bands TO hold wrap
4)drop
5)????
6) profit !!!

 

[tk149]

Think outside the box. Feed the egg to a guniea pig, then throw the pig off the roof.

Hey, you never said it had to remain intact!

OR

Boil egg, peel off the shell. Then stick it in a box with foam peanuts. Less chance of it breaking.

 

[Savarak]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYSlK4f94p0 didn't survive 30ft but if you put it into a box and make sure it didn't land on the shell itself like in the video, it will survive