why is it that eggs can withstand more pressure vertically not horizontilly?

Question

ive been searchin all over the web 4 this and cant find the answer anywere!help!

Answer 1

This is about my thought on it having studied structural engineering and mechanics of materials.


If you look at the vertical egg with the force pushing down, in your imagination cut the egg across where the side of the egg is up and down. There is symmetry about the vertical axis. Divide the half egg into many slices vertically so that you have many strips. Now think of each sliver like a beam. The bending moment on that beam is equal for each beam and is directly related to the distance horizontally to the axis from the outside edge times the force downwards. Now think of the egg laying on it's side and cut it again in half in the same way and divide into strips. These are not symmetrical but you can see that the bending moments can be much larger for the same applied force on the beam pieces because with the egg laying on it's side has a greater distance from a vertical axis to the edges. Of course it is a really more complicated than that, but that should illustrate the important difference. That is about my thought on it having studied structural engineering and mechanics of materials.

Maybe there is a better answer. In reality, there is also shear force and axial force, so the stresses would be a combination of shear, bending and axial at each point in the shell. There are tensile stresses set up also.

God bless you.

Answer 2

When the egg is vertical, a component of the downward force is along the tangent to the egg shell, and hence, it takes more force to break the egg shell in this configuration. When striking along the horizontal, the tangent is perpendicular to the force, and hence, offers no support.

Bozo

Answer 3

simply because the support structure is less when pressed on horizontally.

Answer 4

Because of the way it laying I guess.