Egg Drop Challenge

As we were wrapping up our unit on forces and interactions in Physical Science, I wanted the kids to have the opportunity to apply their knowledge and also have some practice with the engineering process. For our last class before the unit test, we had an egg drop challenge.

I did some research on line, but many of the challenges out there are for students to build an apparatus at home and bring it in for the competition. Since I only see my students for one 90 minute session a week, they are busy during the week with reading the chapter and doing other assignments. I wanted students to have the opportunity to test designs and make improvements as well as practice working as a team.  So, I pilfered ideas mainly from this document and put together what would be my student's in class building challenge.

Students had about 70 minutes to design and build their egg holder. Some were a little slow to start, but by the end they were all fully engaged. If I were to do this again, I'd try to figure out some way to limit the amount of glue from the glue gun used per team. I had about 7 sticks (for a full sized glue gun) and it was all used before some teams had a chance to use it even once. It was primarily one team that went hog wild with it.

In the end, of the seven teams, three of them successfully dropped their egg and had no damage to the egg. The other four were valiant attempts, all of which were exciting to watch.

Here are the directions that I gave students.  It also includes the list of materials that I provided each team. All of it fit in a gallon ziplock bag. Three of the teams asked if they could use the gallon bag, and I did allow them too--even though it wasn't on their list. For students' notebooks, I gave them this reflection sheet. I also made these score sheets. These scores did not effect their lab grade, but was used to decide some fun prizes. In the end, we did not measure the distance from the target since we had to drop them on the stairs and the egg holders were flying everywhere off the steps.