Egg Container Response

For this project, we were supposed to build a container that would protect an egg from a fall from the second floor of a building. My partner, Anne Fletcher, and I started off brainstorming ideas. We knew that we needed to create a buffer zone so that the box into which the egg was to be placed would not be the first thing to hit the ground. Thus, we started off with a fairly decent sized cardboard box and wrapped it in bubble wrap. On the very bottom of the box, half of an egg carton was attached to act as a buffer. The intent of this buffer was to absorb most of the initial force upon impact. More egg carton was taped onto the sides of the box to provide buffer for when the box hit the ground and possibly fell over. The egg itself was wrapped inside a standard grocery bag and placed inside of a cut open pop can. This can was then suspended in the middle of the box by placing supports on the inside of the box. More grocery bags and Styrofoam were placed around the can to provide more buffer for the egg. The testing stage exposed many flaws in the design of the container. In short, the design failed. As the box fell through the air, it flipped upside down and landed on the top where no buffer had been placed. Neither Anne nor I suspected that this would happen. We should have placed a little more weight at the bottom to ensure that the box fell in the direction we wanted. Unfortunately, we cannot determine whether or not the buffer would have worked because it wasn’t really tested.

My partner Anne’s thoughts and analysis of our egg container can be found at her blog - http://aafletch.blogspot.com/