Egg Lander

Design

The design for our egg lander was a relatively simple one. Our goal was to use the straws and wrap the egg in such a way that it would take the least amount of impact. When doing so, we did not want the egg to be wrapped in a rigid casing, knowing that the straws would not take the brunt of the impact and the egg would easily crack. After some contemplation, we decided to build our structure out of alternating triangularly shaped straws. We found that this created a base that was was not rigid, but rather had some bounce to it. This meant that the straws itself would take most of the impact, making it more likely that the egg would survive the fall.

Once done with the base, we were stumped on how to continue. We concluded that our best course of action was to simply wrap the remaining surface of the egg with exactly the same design used for the base. When finished with that however, we were met with yet another problem. Knowing that the bottom of the structure was the only place that could really handle the entirety of the impact, we now had to come with with a way to ensure that our egg lander would land bottom first. Agreeing that we should put the newspaper to use, we built something that resembled the shape of a badminton shuttlecock. Once we attached that to the top of our structure, all that was left was to keep our fingers crossed and hope that our egg would survive.

Top of the lander on the left, base of lander on the right.

Results

R.I.P :'(

Unfortunately, our egg did not survive the fall. Although the egg did land bottom first as planned, our structure was not able to protect it from the impact and the egg plummeted to it's death. I believe that our structure did not work because we did not take the weight of the egg into account. In addition, we underestimated exactly just how much force the egg would have to withstand from its drop.

Modifications

There were several modifications that we could have made in order to help ensure the safety of our egg:

• Modify our design so that the sides are protected just as well as the bottom.
• Perhaps have a separate outer layer to increase the amount of time of impact, decreasing the amount of impact the egg would have to withstand.

Hopefully I can use everything I learned from this first egg lander to my advantage when building the second (hopefully successful) lander.