How do I make a container that doesn't break a raw egg when it is launched from a catapult?

Question

Rules:
1) No styrofoam or any kind of foam. Only corrugated cardboard, popsicle sticks, one layer of nylon on the egg, rubber bands, and Elmer's glue (enough to make connections). The empty container may have a mass no grater than 200.0g. A raw egg will be used.
2) The container, w/ the egg inside, will be launched from a catapult, which will be placed 1 meter from a 1-meter high wall.
3) The container w/ the unbroken egg must travel a minimum of three meters beyond the wall to qualify as a successful launch.
4) The egg must survive the flight intact (no cracks).
5) The winning entry willl be one that has the min. combination of mass and longest linear measurement and maximum trajectory. (less mass, the better)
6) THE EGG MUST BE FREELY SUSPENDED IN THE CONTAINER. IT CANNOT BE PACKED AND IN CONTACT WITH WALLS OF THE CONTAINER.
7) To get full credit, it must go past 9.0 m.
8) The catapult only holds the size of half a baseball so keep that in mind.

Thanks for your input!

Answer 1

Ok!...well look at it this way, the materials all alowed are very good shock absorbers. starting with corugated cardboard which can be supported by the popsicle sticks.
align the popsicle sticks to the borders of the container and make a circle of corrugated cardboard in the middle. if u can think of some way to attach the rubber bands to the circular corrugated cardboard in the middle and to the egg you are set!
Reason? well the popsicle sticks absorb the shock received from the outer wall of the container, the corrugated cardboard keeps the egg in place and transfers the energy to the rubber bands which due to their elasticity will allow for movement hence which will result in the egg being intact as the shock is absorbed by the elements mentioned.

Answer 2

Hmmm. My son and I had an egg-drop challenge a few years ago, and we were successful by following NASA's design for the Mars Rover landers -- parachutes and air bags inside a tetrahedron. However, it's not clear that this would be permissible in the rules of your competition/assignment.

So I'll share the general engineering discoveries we made, and hope you can adapt them to your constraints. Which after all is what engineering is really about... Oh, one more edit: We must have made sixty flights over the course of the week we had to practice this. Broke a lot of eggs, but by the time we were done, we were successful. As test pilots go, eggs are cheap. :-)

1. If you can control the direction of the projectile, you win because you only have to account for impacts in one vector. For us, this meant that using the parachute allowed us to define a clear "bottom" for the capsule, so we used "air bags" (small balloons partially inflated) on that side only.

2. If you can slow the velocity of the projectile, you win because you have less force (
3. Restraining the egg inside the capsule is critical. No matter the size of our parachute or the poofiness (sorry for the highly technical term :-) of our airbags, the egg would crack if left free inside the capsule. What worked best for us was a cylinder of cardboard, a snug fit around the egg, which acted as a kind of friction damper -- aligned with the impact vector, the egg would slide a little inside the cardboard tube. That seems to violate Rule 6, though, so you might want to look into ways of restraining the egg (I'd use the nylon, if possible) that qualify as "freely suspended." Flexible nylon straps... aligned with your major impact vectors... and restricting it from moving laterally as the force is redirected on impact. You know -- seatbelts. :-)

4. Because we didn't have the resources to do a remote-controlled chute release, we went with a simple timer -- a drogue chute that pulled out the main chute. What worked best for us was a simple strip of plastic (about 30cm by 2cm), tied or taped to the center of the parachute, and trailing behind the capsule. The plastic "drogue" strip served two purposes -- it aligned the capsule in a single direction (to manage the impact vector, by moving the center of drag to one side of the capsule), and it also unfurled the parachute. For us, we spent some time tuning the length of the drogue and the method of folding the parachute; if the drogue was too long it would pull the chute too early, while the capsule was still tumbling, and if it was too short it wouldn't release the chute at all and the egg would crack.

Our final design survived nine impacts with the same egg. It rocked... we painted it silver, used gold "airbags," and my son wrote "We come in peace for all mankind" on the bottom.

Best of luck with your egg-catapult challenge! It sounds tough -- we had far fewer constraints, but then again, this was for a first-grade class.... :-)

Answer 3

Like the other answerer's I'm going to come down on the side of "do your own homework."

That said, there are some PRINCIPLES you need to be thinking about.

As you already stated, you have to SUSPEND the egg, so you have to make a frame work, of some sort, presumably from popsicle sticks, cardboard and glue, and then make a sack from the fabric to hold the egg, and then SUSPEND the egg in the sack from the framework USING the rubber bands....

Things to think about -- CRACKING THE FRAME but not DESTROYING the frame can absorbe energy and be a good thing...

Suspending to egg with the rubber bands so tight it can not move is as bad as having it be rigid in the first place... "play" is your friend.

Finally, make it and TEST it by tossing the darn thing up in the air as hard as you can and see what happens....

Good luck

Answer 4

If the egg can withstand the Inertial forces generated, Then it is a simple matter of preventing the box from crushing it on impact. Use several layers of cardboard seperated by popcycle sticks to provide a crush surface. Make sure the egg is suspended inside with the nylon mesh, so that even when it lands it doesent contact the sides. The mesh should be tight but have some "give". If the egg cannt stand the inertia force, dampened by the nylon, there is no hope.

Answer 5

Raw Nylon Thumbs

Answer 6

Parachute

Answer 7

Hmmm...sounds like someone has a physics assignment for over the holidays! That being said, you're supposed to figure it out for yourself, you might just learn something.

Answer 8

Somehow put water in the cantainer.
The egg has a good chance of not braking in water.

Answer 9

So are you the teacher or the student?
I do have the answer. If you are just taking the poll
If you are the student..... Good luck (wink,wink)

Answer 10

I feel sorry for you! Merry christmass!