Design Challenge: Egg Drop

Project Explanation: In this project, we first were given some materials and an egg. We had to build something with the given materials to protect the egg when dropped. Then, we were given a set of rules and had to build something with any materials that we brought that followed the rules to protect the egg when dropped from the balcony.

Technological Concepts: In this project we learned about things such as momentum, inertia, force, and crash zones. Crash zones are used to absorb force when a crash occurs so the force doesn't act on the passenger as much. Momentum is the energy that a thing builds up to keep it going when it is moving. Inertia is the idea that something tends to stay the same, as in an object in motion will stay in motion and an object at rest will stay at rest. Taking into account the energy and momentum the egg will have when it is dropping helped us to decide what materials we wanted to use. The crash zone concepts helped us decide how much protection will be enough for the egg.

Learning Goals: For this project, we wanted to demonstrate the design process with the design matrix and assess how each design will meet the goals. Another goal was learning time management with construction and understand how to stay on task and meet standards set.

Design Brief Small Drop: In the first drop, we created a rectangular prism to hold the egg. To secure the egg in the middle, we added rubber bands around two side to hold the egg snug in the middle. The bottom was padded by the foam piece and we added a triangular parachute in hopes to slow down acceleration.

First device before dropping

This device was fairly successful but it didn't actually protect the egg that well. The egg made it 1.5 meters before it cracked, though, which was pretty good.

Oops

Design Brief Large Egg Drop: We kept with the same idea for this device. We made a cube out of Popsicle sticks to hold the egg. We used a part of a water hold lined with foam to actually hold the egg. We tied the water bottle holder to the frame with string.

Second egg drop device before drop

This device was better constructed and it landed exactly how we imagined every time, but the egg was gone by the first drop off the balcony.

Device is okay! Egg is not...

Positive Feedback: The design worked when dropped, it did not bounce too much and it landed on the right side. In the little drop, the device often flipped the side. The little drop also lasted just about as long as most of the rest of the designs lasted. The big drop was constructed well, I think, and it looked a lot better than most the designs as it was not just a bunch of stuff that thrown around the egg.

Redesign Paragraph: In the little drop, we thought the only problem would be size and stress on the egg. Therefore, in the large drop we did not have anything putting stress around the egg. We also made the whole device larger. In the large drop, I thought the design was golden and it landed the way we expected. We speculated that the egg broke due to large force so I would add more soft things around the egg in the water bottle holder so it wouldn't be damaged.

Technological Resources: The people involved in the designing and planning was mostly Lauren and I. We were limited in the first egg drop to the resources listed. In the second drop, we could use anything that we could get our hands on to bring in. We had a couple days for construction in each case. We could pull information from the internet meaning we could have access to information pretty much world wide. The project didn't really cost anything since we just found things around the house to use.

Biggest Challenge: I think the biggest problem was time for Lauren and I because we used glue to first put everything together and since you have to wait for the glue to dry, we were pretty limited on what we could do each day. We had enough time to do everything but waiting for the glue to dry to continue putting things together came up as a problem a lot which caused us to not utilize all of the time in each day occasionally.

What I learned: From this project, I learned how to generate ideas. Since we had to come with multiple designs, I had to imagine different things I could generate with the materials. Normally I would have just thought of one thing and went with it. I also learned give and take because since somethings needed to be glued together there was a lot of waiting. Other areas didn't have to be glued though, so we taped them together even though it wasn't as in place as the glue portions.