Egg Drop Challenge Competition Results

Going into the challenge our container weighted about 215.3 grams and had dimensions of 24x23x13.  After a successful full drop of 5m in 0.976sec our egg was in perfect shape and we managed to earn 92.6 egg points, which though is not the best, I was pretty happy with it being our container was so heavy. (photo credit to nic)

Our egg after a successful drop

I think one of the biggest restrictions while building was the size factor.  In order for our container to fly like we wanted it too we had to have a far larger wingspan than we could get inside of the regulations.  This caused us to have to change how our container worked and how we were going to approach the challenge.  I think the most successful part of our design was using the insulation for the padding.  It worked very well and kept the egg unbroken through some of the harder falls that we endured.  It took away a lot of the force and softened the blow considerably.  In order to safely support 2 eggs instead of one I wouldn't change a lot to the design except maybe putting a bit more padding in between the two eggs to keep them from breaking on each other.  Other than that I think it is big enough and the lift on the wings great enough to keep the eggs from breaking.

Egg Drop Challenge Test Day

During test day things went pretty good though not how we expected them to go at all.  We had originally planned on making a sort of airplane to direct the force more forwards vs. down to keep the egg in tact.  When we did our first test though (from 5m) the container just fell straight down and tilted so the wings were useless and the egg was smashed.  After that we gave up on the forward flight and just weighted the front end of the container so it was balanced and it worked by falling perfectly level so the wings could do their work and slow down the container and the egg survived.  All the tests after that one worked out perfectly and consistently and we never broke an egg again. (the video below shows one of those successful tests)