Mission egg drop
SMCHS takes on an eggsplosive experiment.
Bombs ahoy! All students take cover. Eggs are falling with great velocity from G3.
Friday Jan. 30, IB Physics dropped eggs with the mission of creating an apparatus to save the egg yolk from breaking through its delicate white shell. Many classroom-to-real-life applications are tested with the egg drop experiment.
“People get injured, and the egg is kind of like the person, and the apparatus is what they design to try and prevent the injury during a collision,” said Brendan Barrow, IB Physics teacher.
Currently, the IB Physics class is learning about momentum, collisions and the forces behind the collisions.
“There are a lot of applications to the real world where collisions happen all the time — with cars or football players — so [the students] are looking at what physics can do to buffer those collisions,” Barrow said.
In order to prevent an egg injury, students were given the direction to construct an apparatus which cushions their egg’s fall. Their one regulation — no parachutes or any other contraption that would slow the egg’s plunge.
“My desired outcome is really engagement, and to really just have fun because physics can get really boring sometimes,” Barrow said.
For the students, the desired outcome is to be a member of the egg drop’s winning group. The lightest apparatus in which the egg is injury-free will be named the champion.
Barrow gives his prediction of the best egg drop apparatus to be made of “materials that have a lot of air in them, like sponge, that compress very easily.”
Additionally, he believes an apparatus that can protect the egg from all angles will have the best survival rate, as the direct landing of the egg’s fall is unpredictable.
The egg drop experiment is a well-known science project, but this is the first year Barrow’s physics classes will give it a shot. The best egg drop will make history in his class, and will be the model for all future experiments to come.
Students have been carefully preparing their egg contraptions for judgment day. Nonetheless, take caution SMCHS, egg shells may be flying.
