Tuan Anh Bui

Report to an Engineer
Objective: Design a device that protects an egg from a drop from the second story of a building.
Materials: 1 Poster board, masking tape, scissors
Summary: The device that my group designed and built successfully protected the egg from the
fall. We used engineering principals in our design. We had only one poster board to work with,
so we had to be efficient in our design, i.e. maximize the protection of the egg and minimize the
materials used. While triangles are the strongest structures and use the least amount of materials
and have a drag coefficient of 0.5, my group decided on a cube design (drag coefficient of 1.05)
due to the lack of precision measuring tools needed for each triangle. We had to account for
Newtons Third Law and the Law of Conservation of Energy. When an object hits the ground,
the ground will apply the same force on the object as the object on the ground. If all the energy is
transferred on the moment of impact, the egg will break. Therefore, we had to distribute the
energy transfer and not break the egg or the laws of physics. We suspended the egg in an internal
housing with bungie like system and applied a spring at the bottom, all made of paper of course.
The four walls of our outer shell, along with our spring and bungie distributed the force due to
gravity and protected the egg. Below is a free body diagram of our design with vector elements.

Gravity
(mg)
Bungie Force

Egg

Spring Force

Ground
(normal
force)