Sorsogon National High School

Senior High School Department

S. Y. 2018-2019, 1st Semester

Egg Drop
Challenge
Grade 12 – STEM 1 (Excellence)

John Rey Decano

Jose Paolo Indiongco
John Renger Jestre
Ma. Raquel Avanica
Celine Dio
Niňa Mae Guides
Jacqueline Rommel Mella

Ms. Rachel Lee

Teacher
Egg Drop Challenge

Objectives:

1. To drop an egg placed in a contraption/device/apparatus from a height without breaking it

2. To exhibit Newton’s Laws of Motion

Materials:

1 raw egg 25 popsicle sticks

Toilet paper rolls Yarn
Regular straws
Procedures:

1. Prepare the materials needed to make the device.

2. Construct a device that would allow a medium-sized egg not to break upon impact on a cemented floor
or the ground.

To make the device, we opted to use these procedures:

a. Make a cube out of the popsicle sticks. Use these to make the edges and sides of the cube. Also
place popsicle sticks on the middle of the sides to strengthen the cue and prevent the inner parts of
the device to come out upon impact.

b. Make four pieces of straws that fit in the cube. These will be used to hold the egg in place.
 -

c. Take the toilet paper roll and make punctures that aree opposite each other. Make these holes
that when the straws are placed, they would form a cross. Do this for the top and the bottom of the
toilet roll. Give just enough space for the egg.

d. Place cut popsicle sticks inside the straw to strengthen them. After this, insert the straws into
the punctured holes.

e. Next, take 100 cm of yarn and cut it into 8 identical parts. Puncture more holes into the toilet
paper roll for the strings this time. Tie 4 strings at the top and 4 strings at the bottom and attach
these to the cube once the roll is placed in it.

f. When the egg needs to be placed inside, just take the top straw out and replace them once the
egg is inside.
3. Now for the moment of truth. Try dropping the device 1 meter from the ground. If this doesn’t break,
Bring the device to the second floor of a building.

4. Drop the device from the second floor of a buildingand the height will be more than 5 meters. After
dropping it, check to see if the egg is still intact.
Results and Discussions

The egg drop challenge is an activity which explains different concepts in physics such as force
and impact, gravity, and acceleration. The objective is to drop an egg from certain heights without it
breaking, hence the use of a device that will encase the egg to protect it. This experiment helps in
understanding the relationship of the mass of an object to the force exerted on it, and the three laws of
motion.

The first law of motion states that an object in motion tends to stay in motion and an object at rest
tends to stay at rest unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. When the device is dropped from a certain
height where the forces exerted are balanced, the egg will not break. However, if the device is dropped a
certain height where the forces are unbalanced, this will cause the egg to break.

The second law of motion states that force is equal to mass times acceleration. Gravity causes the
object to accelerate and the heavier the object is, the greater force it exerts. For the egg to not break even
if dropped from the roof, the device should be very lightweight. If the device is lightweight the lesser impact
it will have once it reaches the ground. The third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal
and opposite reaction. When the egg was dropped from different heights, there was force from the ground
acting upon it. From the first two heights, the force of the ground was not enough to break the egg inside
the device. When dropped from the rooftop, the force exerted by the ground returned to the device which
caused the egg to break.

Conclusion

The contraption device our group designed was effective when dropped from the first two floors, but not
when realeased from the highest floor. This was so because when it was dropped from the rooftop, the
"vertical side" of the contraption hit the ground first which caused the tied toilet paper roll containing the egg
to bounce vertically towards the ground; thus, causing the egg to break. This can be explained by the law of
intercation - that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The force exerted by the
contraption when it hit the bottom was returned by the ground at an equal rate which caused the egg to
break.