Egg Drop Lab

Post Lab

For the egg drop lab we needed to build and create a capsule of some sort to protect the egg while it's being dropped from the third floor of Bishop. 
We (Cameron and I) decided to build our capsule out of colorful straws.  We decided on using straws and ziploc bags /other light materials to create our capsule because we learned in class that the lighter lower the mass of a certain object which in this case is our capsule, the faster it will reach terminal velocity and the slower it would accelerate.  The straws were important because they were very flexible and allowed there to be an increased contact time with the ground.  When watching the after video today in class we saw that when our capsule hit the ground the straws compressed and clearly increased the contact time to protect the egg from all the force.  Inside we place the egg in a cone shaped object made our of straws.  We then surrounded the cone of straws with crumbled paper.  The purpose of this was to make sure that the egg was safe inside and that it wasn't near any of the surrounding walls that were going to make contact with the ground.  The air filled ziploc bags on the side were there to provide padding or cushion for the egg.  On the top of our capsule we taped a plastic bag to hold everything together causing an increase in air resistance.  We tied a rock (more mass) to the bottom middle of our capsule to make sure that the mass of the rock will lead the capsule to falling straight down on the bottom.  One thing that was very good about the tied rock was the length of the string.  The length of the string was perfect.  If it were to be any shorter then it was it would cause the capsule to tilt or fall on any of the sides.  I feel like we could have surround the other sides with straws just in case the egg didn't drop directly on the bottom.  Other than that I thought our egg drop was perfect and really turned out to be successful.

Damage assessment

When dropped our capsule didn't look like there was much damage to it.  The egg was saved and the capsule worked just how we thought it was.  The straws being flexible increased the contact time and decreased the force that was acted on the egg.