<p>We're going to be dropping it 8 meters up. <strong><em>Lightest</em></strong> package with egg intact wins. </p>
<p>I plan to make a Cone out of hard paper. The egg will be nearer the bottom as shown. The extra 2 slashes represent pieces of straw or cushioning material that will prevent the egg break when the package falls tip down and then after hitting the ground, falls on its side.
(the asterisks are just spaces)</p>
<p>Question: How much padding are you adding to the side? I'm assuming most of it is angled towards the bottom tip of the package...</p>
<p>In that case:
you're playing with fire when the success of this package depends on it falling "on its tip" (where most of the cushioning material is).</p>
<p>I'm assuming there is no guide wire for the package, so it will just be in freefall. In that case, you can't expect it to fall tip-first and cushion effectively. You CAN expect it to tumble, possibly landing on its side (where there is less padding).</p>
<p>You take an empty carton of tissues, and a cardboard papertowel roll. Cut out holes in the side of a tissue box so that you can fit the papertowel roll through. Your egg will fit inside the roll. Now, the important thing is the size of the egg. X Large eggs will NOT fit into the roll, but large sized eggs will. I did this last year and won the competition. Its very simlpe, and because of the weight distribution of the egg, the box will land perfectly everytime. The cardboard cushions the impact, lessoning the force.</p>
<p>unfortunately our egg drop contest has a LOT of restrictions. </p>
<p>ie: no parachute, papertowel roll, tissue, etc...
also, they give u the egg right before the drop. you have to fit it in real quick. </p>
<p>how can i improve on my design with the current limitations. what can i do with straws or boba straws. what can i do to make sure my package lands tip down. i need to keep it as light as possible too.</p>
<p>the one and only secret is to make the egg's impact take as long as possible. This is just off the top of my head, but glue or tape paper clips up two sides of an empty tissue box and attach cloth in multilple layers held on just by the paper clips. Put the egg on the top one so when it falls the cloth slips out of the paper clips with sufficient force (the egg falling) and hits the next one, then does the same thing, then the next, etc. this should lessen the force of impact. just off the top of my head.</p>
<p>When I did this in 8th I just attached a small plastic bag filled with crunchy cereal to the bottom of a tissue box. Worked perfectly. The box was filled with some cotton.</p>
<p>i put the egg in between two big sponges and dropped it from 10ft. It didn't even have a scratch, but if you need to aim at a target a sponge is not good, it is easily affected by the wind.</p>
<p>I did this project in 4th grade, and we had to drop it from 3 stories, but I took a rubber ball with approx 4 inch diameter, and cut it nearly in half. I blew up (just enough so that they have a little air in them) a few baloons and surrounded the egg with them. On the outside I created maybe 6 cardboard cones to take most of the blow, and it did not break. It was probably the lightest for my project, although we weren't graded on that, it WAS pretty light, however</p>
<p>If you intend for it to drop on the tip, you had better make sure it does land on it rather than tumble around--put some fins on the side, like fletching an arrow.</p>
<p>All this needs is to take what you have and add some of these fins, making sure they're rigid enough to keep from flapping around. Shouldn't make it too much heavier.</p>
<p>Or, even angle them, so that the object spirals downwards with even better precision... it might slow it down, too.. hmms.</p>
<p>If using straws, you could make a little "chair" at the bottom of the cone of a few crossing straws...
\Cone//
--\//
-//--</p>
<p>When it lands, the chair will soften the impact and the crossing straws will bend and flex and probably bust apart, but the payload will be de-accelerated enough. You probably won't want the chair to be too sturdyl--otherwise it won't break and the whole thing might bounce up and crash..but it needs to provide enough resistance before snapping. Hmms. Try it, it might work. I'm just tossing around ideas here.</p>
<p>Do the rules require the egg to drop straight down? Cause then you could use the fins to guide it to land at shallower angle, reducing the vertical(damaging) component of its final velocity. Make sure it doesn't roll away and smash into a chair =D</p>