Bombs Away! Egg Drop Experiment
Students design and build devices to protect and accurately deliver dropped eggs. The devices and their contents represent care packages that must be safely delivered to people in a disaster area with no road access. Similar to engineering design teams, students design their devices using a number of requirements and constraints such as limited supplies and time. The activity emphasizes the change from potential energy to kinetic energy of the devices and their contents and the energy transfer that occurs on impact. Students enjoy this competitive challenge as they attain a deeper understanding of mechanical energy concepts.
A number of disaster relief packages ready to drop from a low height.Copyright 2005 Paul Klenk, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University
Natural disasters happen all over the world and can cause extreme damage and loss of life. The safe and accurate delivery of life-sustaining supplies to disaster relief efforts or military supply locations is an unpredictable real-world design challenge. Using the engineering design process, limited supplies and an egg to represent perishable supplies, students design, create and test their devices in an effort to investigate problems associated with supply delivery in remote regions. They mimic the process engineers use when designing devices for airdrop supplies.
After completion of this activity, students should be able to:
- Explain what natural disasters are.
- Explain that engineers design and build devices to help people.
- Explain why supplies might need to be dropped from a plane rather than delivered by a car or truck.
- Identify materials that cushion impact.
- Explain the difference between kinetic and potential energy.
- Understand the engineering design process.