This is likely a Tavern topic, but I hope the moderator keeps it here so that more people, including the teetotalers, can offer their ideas.
Daughter has the proverbial egg-in-a-box science project. Put an egg in a shoe box, protect it somehow, drop it from a third story window, and see if it breaks.
Anyone ever do this and have it not break? What’s a winning strategy?
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Replies
Aerosol foam in a can?
Boil it for 10 minutes first! :)
Pete Duffy, Handyman
My son did this also.
Put the egg in an old tennis shoe, no box needed. It worked for him, I think the school roof is about 30'.
Mike
Trust in God, but row away from the rocks.
I helped a young cousin with this once - they could only use soda straws, scotch tape, and notebook paper. I designed a geodesic "star" with the egg in the center; lots of struts in a space frame (keeping the slenderness ratio of each tube less than 30:1, assuming a radius of gyration of a straw at - something. It was skinned with the paper, taped into a couple of layers - it was like a 54-sided ball about 20" in diameter - worked well, and he won.
It was ART, I tell you!
He!!, there wasn't a building in DC outside the monument tall enough to damage it!
I looked for my AutoCAD sketch, but no luck - it was at least ten years ago!
Forrest
small parachute?
Jon Blakemore
RappahannockINC.com Fredericksburg, VA
I liked the method a friend of mine used when she was in science class: she baked a fresh loaf of bread, cut a little pocket inside the loaf and put the egg inside, and put the loaf in a cardboard box. She said it worked great.
Man, that's a super idea - what is bread but a bunch of bubbles? - My kids will have to try that when their time comes.
Forrest
Just like sending something by UPS or FedEx, pack it up with bubble wrap or styrofoam peanuts. Maybe try both, and increase the height until one breaks. That way you know which is better. (BTW, I'd bet on the bubble wrap.)
-- J.S.
A layer of bubble wrap, or two if it has the small bubbles, in a box full of packing peanuts. The added volume due to the bubble wrap keeps the egg from just shooting through the peanuts and hitting the box and if the wrap is tight, it distributes the load over a larger area. Remember, the goal is to cause the egg to decelerate slower than the box. Instantaneous deceleration with no support for the contents is what breaches the shell. Much easier to break from the inside than from the outside.
Whose project is this, anyway, hers or yours?
Whose project is this, anyway, hers or yours?
Don't you know... it's ours!
>Whose project is this, anyway, hers or yours?Don was right...ours! The school intends for projects to be cooperative. Good learning experience. Not a lot at stake. She gets an A if it breaks, and an A+ if it doesn't.My thought was to suspend the egg in a bottle of shampoo or other gel. Saw a mention on the web that sand was a good material if you made the box to break on impact so that the sand dispersed a bit. Lose some of the energy. So we're thinking of putting sand just in the base to weight the box and make it fall right-side up. Then above that a bottle of shampoo in bubble wrap.Someone last year apparently molded the egg in jello, and that worked, too.
>>>My thought was to suspend the egg in a bottle of shampoo or other gel.
That would be a good one, although you might want to ask if you have a choice about which way the box is oriented at launch time. If the box has been sitting for a while the egg may have sunk to the bottom, therfore no cushion. No cushioning = busted egg on impact. If you can request an inversion before launch = lots of cushioning.
On the other hand, maybe your 'suspension' is more dense than the egg, in which case it floats and you're fine. Let 'er rip.
Good luck! Let us know how it works.
Scott.Always remember those first immortal words that Adam said to Eve, “You’d better stand back, I don’t know how big this thing’s going to get.”
My idea was to put the egg in a small balloon and that inside a watar balloon. After several tries and revisions, my idea was a failure.
The shoe idea was my wives and worked repeatedly. Lots of padding in a running shoe.
Get out there and start cracking eggs! Hands on is the way to stir up interest and ideas.
Edit; sorry Scott this was meant for cloud
Mike
Trust in God, but row away from the rocks.
Edited 5/2/2006 9:01 am by ruffmike
If you're packing something delicate to ship, the prefered method is to pack it in bubble wrap inside packing peanuts, and then pack the whole box in another larger box, with packing peanuts in the ~2" gap in between boxes.
zak
"so it goes"
This is an old elementary science project with a great many successful concepts. One of the simplest is to suspent the egg in the middle of the box with old panyhose. Attached to each corner with the egg wrapped snuggly in the middle and the panty hose pulled reasonably taught.
I remember winning a coupla times.
think the best design was 2 shoe boxes to make for one bigger box ...
forget what craddled the egg ... but it was suspended in the middle on rubber bands.
Jeff
Buck Construction
Artistry In Carpentry
Pittsburgh Pa
I actually had the same science project when I was a kid.
I decided that casting the egg into a small block of plaster was a winning strategy. When deciding this, I didn't realize that an egg floats in plaster, so part of the egg stuck out of the plaster when it cured.
The egg still didn't break though. ;-)
"Let's get crack-a-lackin" --- Adam Carolla
boil it 1st..
foam it...
bubble wrap...
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming
WOW!!! What a Ride!
Forget the primal scream, just ROAR!!!
If you can find an egg farmer in your area, get the eggs from younger chickens. The young birds are healthy enough to make thicker shells, as opposed to the old bird's, that are thinner. Might give you a slight edge.
Get a large crusty roll or bun and cut it almost in two. Hollow a bit to fit around the egg and close it up. (Peanut butter maybe?) Surround it with either popcorn, puffed wheat/rice, or cheese puffs (for that oh so tasty day-glow orange colour).
Could also put it in the middle of a nest of small balloons filled with water or your shampoo.
If you know a plastic surgeon maybe you could get him to loan you some of those silico.......Nah. Bad idea, unless your girl is about to go to Med school.
Actually, peanut butter might be a good choice, though jam might even be better. One problem, though, is to avoid increasing the weight of the container too much. There's probably a 2x+ difference in terminal velocity between a shoebox with bubble wrap and one with some sort of liquid in it.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. --James Madison
This reminds me of the problem we had in Nam trying to feed the villagers with bags of rice dropped from planes. The bags ruptured and spread rice all over hells half acre. Anyone remember how they solved the problem? If I remember correctly they put the little bags in a big bag, the little ones broke but the outer one didn't.
I saw newsreel footage of them doing this in Viet Nam. They'd open a regular bag, dump out half into another bag so that each bag was half full, then put each bag in another bag. Everything sewn shut.But some of the bags would still burst open.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. --James Madison
That's correct. The tightly packed inner bag would rupture, and the loose outer bag would usually contain everything. IIRC, this was used in WWII or Korea, too.
-- J.S.
Fill the whole thing with Great Stuff
Edited 5/2/2006 9:13 am ET by xosder11
I think we need a bit more info.
Most of these contests have specific rules you have to follow like no parachutes. Some have a restricted list materials that can be used. If you want to try something not allowed but that might be allowed, such as the bread loaf, talk to the person in charge and get a ruling EARLY.
We only got to use a couple of materials they put in front of us.
No box, just paper, a cup, some tape and some tongue depressers. This design withstood multiple impacts from 30' onto concrete w/o issues. The structure finally did start to break when we intentionally launched it upside down to hit point first. The Egg came out fine though.
Didn't read the entire thread, so maybe someone has already posted this:
suspend the egg inside a piece of pantyhose inside the box. (Poke 2 holes in opposing sides of the box. Stretch the pantyhose tight between the holes; tie off on the outside to a pencil or scrap of wood). Can demonstrate better than describe. The egg never touches anything if the hose is stretched tight enough, so it can't break...
Lots of bubble wrap werkt fer me and mi son.
What's a winning strategy?
From watching too much Junkyard Wars, layers of "eggcrate" foam. You need "crushable" material to decelerate the egg. Anything rigid just transfers the impact straight to the shell.
An egg is only strongest directly along the long axis (and does not like hardly any torque at all). Just think of how you crack an egg to get it out of the shell (ok, it helps to have been sous chef, and hired on assistantes with an old kichen trick of seeing if they know how to crack an egg longwise).
Now, suspension will work, but you need flexibility and impact padding. 6-7 legs of nylon hose (you want each to contribute a little "stretch") across the diagonal of the shoebox, and then a liner of foam padding might just suffice.
You can do some fun math on this, if you're keen. Weigh a few eggs, measure the window sill for the drop, you can calculate the likely acceleration, and whether you might just hit terminal velocity--that sort of thing.
"(ok, it helps to have been sous chef, and hired on assistantes with an old kichen trick of seeing if they know how to crack an egg longwise)."
Ok. I'll bite. (Groan!) What's the trick? I must say that, until I read this post, I never even considered cracking an egg longwise!
Mike HennessyPittsburgh, PA
What's the trick?
Well, first, I need 3 bushels of onions chopped, one coarse, one fine, on minced. Then I need about a quart of garlic roasted and minced. See that the produce is picked over (the entire truckload) for any thing we cant serve--make three groups, servable, stockable, and dumpster liner. When that's done see that there's enough starter for all of tomorrow's bread made up.
Oh, wait, you were not looking for a primer on how to succeed in acomercial kitchen. Snomon is half way there. Hold the egg by thumb & forefinger. Hook your index finger 'back' until the palm-finger joint cracks the egg where it bears. Alternately, you take out your medium french slicer and tap the tip of the egg right at the balde-bolster joint. (Note that the "trick" is really are you a prepared person to wotk in the kitchen.) Consider that in restaurant proportions, the pasta flour is made with dozens of eggs, not pairs. Or that the dough for those fresh mini loaves is made up with flour by the (weighed) pound.
Make person not want to prepeare food at all when they get home, it can.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
The bread sounds like one of the best approaches. Basically, you want something that will crush/mush and burn off the energy of the falling egg.
Another option that comes to mind is DapTex foam. It's much softer than regular "Great Stuff" and maintains a degree of gooeyness that should burn energy fairly well.
One of the difficulties with this sort of contest is that the judges generally have to be able to inspect the egg for breakage after each drop.
This means that encasing it too much can be a royal pain at best, and cause a mechanical failure from repeated assembly/disassembly (at worst).
One thing to be aware of is that an egg is very strong when resisting pressure on the ends. Try to crush one between your thumb and finger positioned on the ends, and it will not break. This means that you would ideally like to control the orientation of the egg when it strikes. This can be done with careful weighting of the box and an immobilized egg. This will also allow you to place the egg near one end of the box, increasing the "decel" zone. Some lead flashing would do it.
One team had a great deal of success with a foam cup filled with peanut butter at the core. The egg was nested into the peanut butter. The difficulty was inspection. I would be tempted to try jello instead. If you used a clear gelatin in a clear container, the egg would be visible to the judges.
Couple this with some strategic foam, and that could be a winner. I would use softer foam near the impact side increasing to denser foam as it gets closer to the egg.
Don't know if this would be allowed if it must be inside a shoe box, but it worked for me.
Wrapped the egg lightly in bubble wrap, filled a garbage bag full of water and floated the egg on top.
Great explosion when it hit the ground, and the egg survived.
Did the exact same thing in high school. Everyone had to come up with containers that would keep an egg intact if it was dropped off the top row of the football stadium. I ended up doing 2 boxes, both covered with foam on the inside. One box had the foam touching the egg on six sides, and the other was slightly bigger and let the egg bounce around a little. The one that let the egg bounce around survived, and the one that actually touched the sides of the egg was scrambled.
cover the egg in 1/2 inch of vaseline.
it has just enough give to absorb the impact.
The trick is to increase the time the egg takes to deccellerate, kinda like the difference between running into a wall or running into a wall that has a mattress on it. The mattress increases the time it takes to slow down and hence makes it hurt less.
I did an egg drop with the students in my summer science program. but I only gave them the following:
4 4x8 index cards
6 drinking straws
2 yards of 1/2 inch masking tape
4 dixie cups
one paper lunch bag
8 cotton balls
3 tissues
3 yards of string
we dropped from about 25 feet. most of the eggs survived, way fun, made a huge mess. glad to have done it outside.
Jeff
In high school physics, we had a similar challenge. The kicker for us was that we were graded on 1) did the egg survive...and 2) what was the weight of the device used to deliver the egg. I think the highest drop was 15 feet. Whoever had the lightest weight, successful 'vehicle' got a 100% on the project and everyone else was graded on a curve from there.
Since I knew that an egg is incredibly strong on the long axis (remember trying to crush an egg by sqeezing end to end?) I simply made a tube of poster board and provided a bit of a cusion at the tip by using a truncated water cooler cone-cup stuffed with tissue paper. I added some wings to insure that the tube fell straight. After some tweaking and snipping to get the smallest, lightest tube that still fell straight it was ready for some test drops from my parent's roof. Everything worked good for the tests.
When I handed it to the teacher he just smirked and said "that's it?" No one was smirking after it went full height and weighed in at only 10.4 grams! I got the hundred. Amazing what can be done when you use the natural strengths of the materials you're dealing with.
In college a couple fraternity brothers had a similiar project. They spent many hours and nights brainstorming at the pub with the local attractions but only had phone numbers and no solution.
Upon waking up late and hung over the day of the test they grabbed a nerf football, cut it in half, hollowed a small pocket for an egg, and taped back together. They had a resounding and simple success.
The exercise was a rousing success. She reports that about half broke and half did not. Hers did not, so she got an A+. Not only that, but she managed to drop hers directly onto another child's, and it broke his box and egg! Strong on defense AND offense!
Ours was the heaviest, most likely. Overkill to be sure. In the base we put a packet of flour as a weight to ensure right side up. We perfed the pack so that it would break and disperse on impact, which it did. Then we created a tube out of rolled bubble wrap. In the cylindrical center, we placed a plastic bag and filled it with liquid soap. We put the egg into the toe of a spare half of pantyhose, and then tied it so the egg was suspended in the upper third of the soap. We figured that on impact, the hose would stretch and the soap would resist and the bubble wrap would protect against lateral impact. Worked perfectly. She reports that the flimsy box didn't even come apart. She had the messiest by far, but since it was soap (almost went for motor oil), cleanup was easy enough.
And did I mention we crushed another child's box, and so he only got an A. Too bad, so sad. :) Actually, my daughter guessed that his probably broke in the fall and hers just finished it off.
Thanks for the ideas.
Freeze the egg
Good morning,
We did this successfully several years ago. A plastic peanut butter jar (not a small one) filled with dead flies. (Flies had accumulated in a vacant house I was renovating).
Good luck