Inspired by the Ignite Seattle challenge and Bre Pettis’ blog posts, the girls and I decided to try our own egg drop experiment even though we couldn’t make it to the meeting on Tuesday night.
First I got out the shipping box I had received from Apple with my MacBook repairs and I let the two older girls create their own contraptions with those egg crate and blue foam packing materials plus lots of duct tape. I figured anything Apple was using had probably been proven effective in various drop situations.
I also thought it would be fun to use ordinary household objects. So Elisabeth and I stuffed an old baby bath sponge inside a Lego container. She packed the remaining empty space with washcloths. For a fourth experiment, I did a little reading online (while trying to research how to do the actual drop) and decided to try popcorn packed inside an empty (sugar) carton.
We didn’t watch Bre Pettis’ video until after we had dropped our own eggs. As always his creations and ideas are inspiring. He also included a simplified equation that could be used to calculate the speed of the egg. Since our drop was 8 feet, the egg reached a speed of 15 miles per hour on its way from our deck rail to the concrete outside our garage.
The girls made the suggestion so I made fried rice for dinner: we ate the three eggs that survived the drop.
For more details, please watch our video! The girls each describe their creations and then we discovered which ones would survive the fall…
I can’t wait to try this one again. It’s fun and educational. And as Bre suggests, a great thing to do as a group. Thanks to Ignite Seattle for the inspiration!
9 responses so far ↓
1 Katherine // Feb 15, 2007 at 2:22 am
How fun! Thanks for the cool video. I loved watching it. It’s interesting to see your kids’ different personalities through their interviews. This post makes me hungry!
2 bre // Feb 16, 2007 at 9:49 am
Hey, mind if I use some clips from this video in a little roundup video of stuff people are making?
Bre
3 Bob V // Feb 21, 2007 at 9:18 am
I like how Abigail used her imagination to design and Michaela used tape and foam. How funny!
4 PoohBearr. // Mar 28, 2007 at 8:34 am
I Would Like To Know More About This Im Doing A Project On Egg droppping in my grade 7 class to please email me for hints.
Thanks.
5 Marina K. // Apr 11, 2007 at 3:56 pm
I still didn’t do my project yet but I like the idea yu have with the one in popcorn.
6 Peter B. Stiff // Aug 20, 2007 at 10:24 am
i like the popcorn idea. cheap and it works.
7 Diamond // Sep 20, 2007 at 9:05 pm
I DID MY PROJECT AND GOT AN A THANKS
8 maryclaire // Mar 10, 2008 at 7:16 pm
are you sure the popcorn works? Because i love that idea and i’m going to do it for school!
9 Desirae // May 27, 2008 at 8:53 am
I hope that it work off of a building cuz I’m goin to try it
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