Re: what does an egg drop project have to do with physics?

Hi Vastye,

An egg drop project has a lot to do with physics! (You knew I'd say that, didn't you?) Physics deals with properties, changes, movements, and so on, of matter and energy. An egg is made of matter, it moves when it drops, and it may change, viz. break, when it hits. You have to understand the physics of this problem so that you can build a contraption to avoid breaking the egg.

There are round toothpicks and flat ones. Every engineer is taught that a flat beam, i.e. toothpick, is stronger than a round or square one. This is why I-beams are used to construct buildings. You can see this for yourself. Get a hold of three toothpics: two flat ones and a round one. Break the round in half - and try to remember how much strength it took. Next, hold one of the flat toothpicks so that the flat side faces up -- it should be pretty easy to break that way. Finally, hold the other flat toothpick so that the flat side faces sideways -- it should be the hardest to break.

You might take a look at these web-pages:

http://library.advanced.org/11686/ "Build It & Bust It" This site has some java applets that may give you some insight into building structures and understanding how strong they are. It's really set up for bridges -- I know that's not exactly what you're after, but sometimes you have to take what you can get ;)

http://www.mse.arizona.edu/faculty/birnie/EngrsWk/EggDrop.htm This is one of several sites you might find on the web with discussions of similar egg-drop contests. They didn't use toothpicks, but you may benefit from their experiments. You can find other sites using a search engine such as Google or AltaVista, including one about designs based on those from Leonardo DaVinci

http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/1856/egg.html These students did participate in a similar project, toothpicks and all, and have posted their designs on the web. These may give you some ideas, but you should let your teacher know you've been looking at them.

The best advice I can give you is to simply experiment. Toothpicks are cheap -- so are eggs. Just try a lot of different designs and see how they work. You might also take hints from the way other things are built. For example, a common engineering technique for cars these days is the "crumple zone" -- the body of the car is *destroyed* as it *absorbs* the impact of the collision. The car ends up pretty ugly, but the people inside are safe and "unbroken" :)

Troy