Egg Drop

Pre-drop:
Candace and I worked together to make a device to hold our egg to (hopefully) make it survive the 3 story fall. We have a small mailing box from the post office packed with bubble wrap and a towel for the egg. It's dimensions were 17 x 18.5 x 18.5 cm. The mailing box has a good amount of surface area on the bottom, which I hope will cause more air resistance. All the bubble wrap surrounded the egg will ideally keep the egg from bouncing around in the box, and will keep it stable and in place throughout the fall. We decided against wrapping the box in bubble wrap, because we didn't want the bubble wrap to cause our device to bounce around, which as we have learned causes more force.

Our box, pre-drop:

The forces acting on our box during the fall were gravity (or mass x acceleration) and air resistance. The weight of the box is what was pulling it down, and the air resistance was what kept it from falling faster.

The distance:

Our box, post-drop:

As our box was falling, I was actually feeling pretty confident. But as it hit the ground, it hit on the edge and flipped over a couple of times. At the time, it was terrifying and I thought the extra motion would cause the egg to crack. But back in class, Mr. Blake explained that it landing on the corner was actually ideal, because it had a better chance of compressing without damaging the egg and increasing contact time. So when I cut our box open and dug through the bubble wrap, our egg was alive! no cracks, smile intact. Looking back, I think a change that I would have made to our box would be using a bigger, flatter box, instead of a relatively square one in order to increase air resistance.

We named her Sunny.