Egg Drop Contest

Christine had an egg drop contest this morning at school. I had never heard of one before, but I guess it's quite a common thing. She had to build a device to house an egg. The device would be dropped off the school roof. If the egg survives, she wins a prize. So naturally, I googled egg drop and found tons of stuff - but none of it useful. I'm not that creative - and I'm not an engineer, so I was looking for pointers. I couldn't find anywhere online that gave details on how to make a successful device. So I'm going to do that now. The parameters of the contest were that it couldn't be longer than 12" on any one side, couldn't contain bubble wrap, foam or spray insulation, packing peanuts, balloons or parachutes. This is what we came up with:

First of all, let me just say that Christine was scowling at me when I started this design. She was complaining that it wouldn't work, and told Emily, "Mom, Dad's doing something stupid." But once we tested it and it worked, she thought it was the best idea ever. I was suddenly her best friend. At WalMart she kept saying, "I love you Daddy." I liked that part.

All we did was take a piece of posterboard (WalMart $.59) and rolled it into a cone and taped it with packing tape. We cut the bottom part of some plastic hangers and poked them crossway through the top to keep the cone from toppling over. On the inside, we put a golf ball in first (to keep the nose pointed down), then packed cotton in all the way up to the top. Then we just stuck the egg right there on the top (just underneath the hangar parts). We did a test run off the roof of our house (15 feet) with our prototype (it only took 10 minutes to make) and it was successful. The egg was intact. We tried it again with the prototype, and again the egg remained unbroken. The school height is more like 20 feet. So I was a bit worried about that. But, at the contest this morning we had another successful drop, much to Christine's delight. She was so excited to not break her egg and claim her prize (a pinwheel). Afterwards, she was proudly showing her unbroken egg to everyone. I imagine it will end up as a pile of sludge in her pocket by the end of the day. If you have questions about the design, feel free to comment and I'll respond to you.