A question for the engineers....

[Fat Elvis]

I have a question about egg drop stuff....

An egg typically weighs 55 grams.

It takes 25 Newtons to break an egg.

If you drop an egg from 25 ft, the egg will be travelling at ~40 ft/sec (12.2 m/sec) or roughly 27 mph when it hits the ground.

Assuming no use of a parachute or whatever to decrease the rate of fall, how much force needs to be "absorbed"/redirected or whatever to keep the egg from breaking?

How many Newtons (I'm not really sure what that is other than it is a unit of force where it is the amount needed to accelerate 1 kilogram of mass at the rate of 1 metre per second squared) would be exerted on the egg from a drop from that height?

I'm stumped.

[Fat Elvis]

Originally Posted by cdcox

OK I see your problem. You are using the default stopping distance of 0.1
m -- that is like 4". For an egg landing on a hard surface, the stopping distance is very short. If you use a stopping distance of 0.001 m, probably still too large, you will get a more realistic impact force, and a broken egg.

Nice catch there cd....OK, using the stopping distance of .001m, I get an impact force of about 3914N at that particular height.

[loochy]

Originally Posted by Rausch

I remember doing this in 7th grade.

We were given specific rules on the weight of what we could use to stop the egg or protect it.

No rules were given about methods for catching it.

We put a big laundry basket under there with some really soft pillows and didn't even **** with the egg. We had outsmarted everyone.

My buddy dropped the egg and I think he was so sure we'd win he didn't really pay attention and the thing bounced off the side of the plastic laundry basket and smashed on the pavement.

We lose.


Alex Smith...

We had to drop eggs from the top of a grain elevator in high school physics.

From what I remember, we the following materials to use:

styrofoam solo cup
a pipe cleaner
2 popsicle sticks
2 playing cards
2 feet of string
2 rubber bands
1 coffee filter
some scotch tape (maybe 6 inches worth?)

All of the rest of the class attempted to make parachute type devices that worked with varying degrees of success.

I designed a helicopter type device that translated some of the downward energy into rotational energy. The blades were made from playing cards attached to the popsicle sticks. I made a sort of cradle for the egg by making a stretched and suspended rubber band base inside the cup. On top of the rubber bands was the wadded up coffee filter. The egg sat on top of that. I held the egg in place pointy side down with the pipe cleaner. I thought the pointy side down would translate more energy through the shell parallel to the length of the shell instead of perpendicular to the shell (if that makes sense - send the force up through the shell instead of across it). Anyhow, mine was one of the two that actually worked.

[mikeyis4dcats.]

I could have answered that 14 years ago....now, not a chance.

Add more cushion.

[loochy]

Originally Posted by mikeyis4dcats.

Add more cushion.

Hell no.

/Omaha

[Ebolapox]

scientific olympiad question?