Assignment Summary
For this assignment, your teacher will give you an egg and some building materials. You will use these
materials to build a device that will keep an egg from cracking when it is dropped from a certain height.
Then you will test the device, determine how well it worked, and make recommendations to improve its
design. You will present your final design and the logic that supports it in a lab report. Your lab report
should include a title, an initial design, observations from your experimental tests, and recommendations
for a final design based on force and momentum concepts as well as observations from the tests
conducted. To help you write your lab report, there is a Student Worksheet on the last few pages of this
document.
I
Background Information
The shell of an egg is designed to distribute the force of an adult bird sitting on the egg, but it does not
retain its form as well when faced with a sudden impact. Unprotected, the shell of the egg cracks and the
contents of the egg splatter in many directions. During this project, you will design a device to protect an
egg on impact. The egg will be dropped from a designated height and allowed to collide with the ground. To
protect the egg from impact, you will need to lengthen the time before impact by using your knowledge of
force, Newton's third law of motion, and momentum. This is an engineering challenge because it combines
physics principles with real building materials and design constraints. It provides you with the opportunity to
think about a problem, construct a solution, and evaluate your solution's effectiveness.
Safety
Wear safety goggles, as the egg will be dropped and pieces could break off upon impact. The eggs
not be consumed during or after the experiment
The eggs
