Egg Drop Help?

Question

My science class is doing an egg drop contest. We are goin to drop egg from about 10 feet up. You HAVE to use only these materials:
15 straws 15 rubber bands
15 popsicle sticks 1 meter of string
1 sheet of copy paper 1 meter of tape
10 paper clips 1 raw egg

And if its light I get bonus points.
Can somebody help tell me how to build on of these egg drop thingys so it wont't break

Answer 1

What you are doing by dropping the egg is converting potential energy to kinetic energy. When the egg hits the ground, that kinetic energy is acting on the egg in a very short amount of time. This breaks the egg.

What you want to do is A: slow the velocity of the egg so that it is not in a free fall and does not develop as much kinetic energy, and B: increase the amount of time over which the developed kinetic energy acts - bleeding it off at a rate which will not break the egg.

A suggestion would be to build a bottom "cushion" out of the straws, a structure out of the Popsicle sticks and tape that is about 2 ft (1/2 a meter) tall, and hang the egg in the structure by the rubber bands. The paper could be used as a "kite tail" or drag chute to assure the the structure lands on the soda straw cushion.

When the egg is dropped, the soda straws crush and begin to slow the egg, the structure begins to collapse and the rubber bands stretch, further slowing the egg and bleeding energy, by the time the mess allows the egg to hit the ground, it should be at a velocity of nearly zero. If your rig "bounces" the egg, you have too many rubber bands. You want the structure to be destroyed by the fall (this bleeds energy), so trail and error will require multiple constructions.