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Egg Drop – Do you like them scrambled or not!

Hold an egg at ceiling height. Drop it. What happens? Can you design a container that will prevent the egg from breaking or cracking? That’s not really so hard if you think about it. Let’s see, put some cushioning in a box and place the egg in the middle, drop it and if all goes well the egg will be fine.

This activity will be held in two parts.

Objectives

bulletTo design and build a container with maximum volume that will prevent three uncooked eggs from breaking or cracking when dropped from a height of approximately 2.5 meters and later from a height exceeding 10 meters.
bulletTo determine if the container is in free fall from calculations.

Activity 1
  1. Design a container that will hold one uncooked egg. Your container may not be larger than 3375 cubic centimeters. (This means no larger than 15 cm x 15 cm x 15 cm). No single dimension of your container can be longer than 25 cm.
  2. Your container may not exceed 1-kilogram total mass. This includes the mass of the egg.
  3. Your container will be dropped from a height of approximately 2.5 meters.
  4. Your container must be opened immediately after your drop to determine its success or failure.

Activity 2
  1. Design a container that will hold 3 uncooked eggs and be dropped from the top floor of Park Street Middle School (three floors).
  2. Your container may have no dimension larger than 25 cm and may not exceed a total of 2000 cubic centimeters. Your container including eggs may not exceed 1.5 kg total mass.
  3. Your container must be able to be opened easily after its drop to ascertain the condition of the eggs.

Testing Conditions

  1. Containers for each activity must be constructed prior to the school day testing.
  2. A representative from each lab group will bring the assembled container containing its eggs to the instructor. All dimensions will be measured to ensure that none exceed the 25-cm maximum. The mass of the container will be determined.
  3. A representative from the student lab group will drop the container (with eggs) from the designated height (approximately 2.5-m in activity 1). Activity 2 height will be measured on the day of the activity.
  4. Immediately after your container is dropped a representative from the group will extract the eggs from the container and have them examined by the instructor.
  5. Each lab group is responsible for cleaning up and removing all items from the lab area.

Performance Assessment

Level 5

Level 4

Level 3

Level 2

Level 1

No Eggs Broken or cracked

 

50 49 48 47 46

One Egg broken or cracked

 

45 43 42 41 40

2 eggs broken or cracked

 

39 38 37 36 35

3 eggs broken or cracked

 

34 33 32 31 30

No attempt made or poor construction

29 25 20 15 10 0

Dimensions of container with design specifications for activity

 

 

10 9 8 7 6

Dimensions of container outside of design specifications for activity

 

5 4 3 2 1 0

Volume of container within the design specifications for activity

 

10 9 8 7 6

Volume of container exceeds design specifications for activity

 

5 4 3 2 1 0

Mass of container within design specifications for activity

 

 

10 9 8 7 6

Mass of container exceeds design specifications for the activity

 

5 4 3 2 1 0

Questions answered with all calculations shown. Quality and understanding are seen within answers

 

 

20 19 18

Questions answered will most work shown. Answers show quality but could show more undertsnding of concepts

 

17 16

Questions answered. Some quality in answers lacking, possibly work not shown

 

 

 

 

15 14

Questions attempted, may have missing parts or answers. Lack of quality or completeness

 

 

 

13 12

Little or no attempt made to answer questions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

11 10 5 0