Egg Drop Challenge Report

Our first major lab in this course was The Great Egg Drop. The class divided into teams of two or three, and chose a country to represent. Alexandra and I were a team, we represented Japan. Each team was responsible for designing and building an ‘egg catcher.’ The contraption should have been able to catch a naked egg from a height greater than or less than 17 feet. The catch? You were only allowed to use one roll of masking tape, and 100 straws.

For the past few weeks, Alex and I have worked hard to create our contraption. Not only did we sketch our design, and build it, we spent some time calculating the egg’s energy and speed. Below are our calculations. We revised our problem definition to: “Our clients’ chickens are laying eggs at heights less than or equal to 17 feet. She is having trouble collecting the eggs because they are breaking once they hit the ground.

We had many ideas on how to design our contraption. At first, we decided to do a funnel design, with a centered basket (pictures below). We had two separate plans for our basket, either we were going to build a straw bottom or a hammock bottom made from tape.

Once we started building our egg-catcher we noticed a few things. First, it made more sense for us to have a square foundation because it gave our basket more support. Then, instead of using just one basket design, we decided to use both for more cushion and support for the egg. 

Finally, we completely disposed of the funneled top to help with our budget and the amount of used materials. In the pictures below, our foundation is composed of for triangles made from straw and taped together. Our basket was created by using straws cut into thirds with a tape drape interior. Lastly, Alex covered our base and top with some extra tape for sturdiness. Our final product is below. Our chicken farmer told us that our design looked like something out of Jamestown, so we decided to call it JTEC (Jamestown Egg Catcher).

Throughout the design process we tried to use as little materials as possible. We did not use 100 straws and we did not finish our roll of masking tape.

For our first test, we used the plum bob to make sure we aimed just right. Alex was our designated egg dropper. However, she was so nervous that we missed our basket and broke our egg. Alex tested her egg dropping skills just a bit more and managed to succeed in landing our egg into our basket unharmed almost every time. She dropped an egg from about 16 feet but missed her first try. However, she learned that in our final test, we would have to put JTEC closer to the wall so she doesn’t have to reach her arm out so far. There is a picture below to show her practice.

On our competition day, everyone was nervous! But, each team did their best and I’m sure our client was pleased. To start things off, Alex and I weighed JTEC and it was 49.9 grams. Then we picked three eggs out of the carton, weighed them and named them. Our first egg was AM and it weighed 60.8 g. Our second egg was MA, it was our heaviest egg weighing 65.1 g. Our third egg was EA and it was the lightest weighing 56.6 g. First, we dropped MA from about 7 feet. The egg landed directly in the basket, with no cracks! Next, we dropped AM from a little less 9 feet and it landed in the basket unharmed! Finally, we dropped our lightest egg, EA, and we weren’t so lucky. EA did not make it safely into our basket. There were no adjustments made to JTEC in-between drops. Below is a video showing our second drop with AM.

Alex and I both worked hard in completing this project. I really enjoyed having her on my team because we fed off of each other’s ideas to create bigger and better ones! We learned that teamwork is the most important thing when designing and creating something to solve a problem. We also learned to be open minded about all of our ideas, which is what helped us to create such a great device.

I had a lot of fun with this lab and I know everyone else did as well! I was very impressed with the other teams as well as Alex and I. Everyone had some awesome ideas, and I’m glad our client was pleased!