the egg drop?

Question

how can i drop an egg from the top about 30 feet without it breaking, the only supplies allowed are 10 sheets of paper and 1 meter of tape. (the less of the supplies you can use the better.)

Answer 1

Make a big ball of the sheets provided put the egg at the centre - fix with tape and drop. the egg will not break.

Answer 2

I saw a kid do this one time with three sheets of paper and about that much tape (probably a bit less).

He took two sheets and taped them end to end to make a long rectangle. He then cut slits in the middle of that rectangle. These slits did not extend to the edge of the paper. They were just there to allow air to pass thru the middle of the paper to help guide the descent.

He took strips of tape and folded them over so that no sticky side was still exposed. He used these to tie his parachute rectangle paper corners to the third sheet of paper. The third sheet, he made a sort of cone. The egg sat in the cone and when this was dropped, the parachute would slow the egg down and when it hit, the tip of the cone would crumple and absorb some of the shock.

It was the easiest egg drop setup I have seen. It takes a bit of practice to get it just right. We used to do the egg drop as part of our travelling science exhibit program. I tried his technique and the hardest part is getting that cone shaped just right. It needs to be tight enough to hold the egg but loose enough to allow it to crumple up.


Another suggestion. Study a bit of origami. Here is one site with a lot of interesting designs that might be able to hold and egg and provide a bit of shock absorbtion.

http://home.comcast.net/~meenaks/diagrams/diagrams.html


Also study the origami iris. A few of those taped together just right might do the trick.

Answer 3

use the paper for a parachute. line the paper up on the floor 2 rows of 3 and tape em all toghether. the less tape the better, it will fall slower

Answer 4

1, make 10 inflatable balls with the paper. http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/lectures/14_origami/origamiBallinstructions.html

2. blow up the balls then tape them around the egg keeping the spherical shape. the egg should be in the center.

3. the pockets of air will absorb the impact of the landing and your egg will survive.

Answer 5

"egg drop experiment" is the phrase to use in a search engine. I found 20 sites.

Of course, you can always secretly hard boil the egg before the experiment, and explain to your teacher or prof that you had to classify it as "top secret" before the experiment so that "the enemy couldn't get it to use against us."

Answer 6

when i did this project in school, we built a little basket for the egg to sit in, and a little parachute... :)

Found some links to some more info that may give u some ideas in constructing it.

http://www.angelfire.com/az/eggsacrossthenet/page2A.html

the basket as a cone shape may not be a bad idea to try out.

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Physics-1358/egg-drop-lab.htm

http://physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-148941.html

best of luck, this is always a fun project!

Answer 7

Make a parachut for the egg