Egg Drop Competition

Materials (per group):

An assortment of newspaper, tissue paper, masking tape, Styrofoam cups, plastic bags, and whatever else you feel like using. Don't give the groups too much material (determining "too much" comes with practice). Each group also gets one raw egg.

A tall step ladder

Access to a 2nd and 3rd storey window in a building, if possible.

The Challenge:

In teams, the girls are to design a container that will keep their egg safe (i.e., no cracks or breaks) when it is dropped from a height. It is important that the containers be open-able, so that after each drop the eggs can be checked. Allow the groups about 25 minutes to build their container. Once all the containers are built, they are all dropped from a given height (I usually start by standing on a chair and holding the containers as high over my head as possible). The eggs are checked for damage and any which survive intact are then dropped from a higher height. This continues until you either run out of tall objects to drop the containers from or all the eggs are broken.

I do this activity every year with my grade 8 science classes during the last week of school. The highlight of the activity comes when I get to climb up to the top of the gym roof at my school and drop the containers to my waiting class below!

Return to Science and Technology Page

Becky's Guiding Resource Centre Main Menu