SMS
RSS feeds
Reddit
NewsvineThe suspense was almost too much to bear at last Friday’s Egg Drop Contest, when the crowd converged upon a strange contraption outside of Terman Engineering Center. At its feet was a red, taped-up container that smelled faintly of...peanut butter?
Enlarge
“Material science at its finest!” said Jacobi Grillo ‘09, describing the device he and teammate Diego Azurdia ‘09 had assembled to survive the five-story drop. Having exhausted their resources until 30 minutes before the competition, the most convenient alternative they could find to house their egg was a jar full of peanut butter: Quite the unconventional, yet entertaining, recipe for success.
Diapers, toilet brushes and twisted balloons fit for a clown also made an appearance at the sixth annual Egg Drop, a challenge sponsored by the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi. The event challenges students from all majors to build a device that will protect a raw egg’s descent from the fifth floor of Terman. Egg survival does not guarantee a victory, however; a scoring formula is careful to factor in weight, deviation from a drop target three meters from the building and time of fall.
Coterminal student in chemical engineering Wataru Ebina, the event coordinator and vice president of Tau Beta Pi, made changes to this year’s constraints to maximize the participants’ range of entries. The scoring formula used during his freshman year incorporated a length element, which, along with the weight factor, gave parachutes a particular advantage. This year, his elimination of the length factor “helps people be more creative in their design. It gives more points to things that fall really fast, yet survive, which is more impressive.”
Beyond these constraints, Ebina assured that “there’s no right or wrong.” Compared to an academic world of dry problem sets, he described the competition as a perfect “outlet for pent-up creative energy.”
Creative, indeed. The devices surely lived up to their intriguing titles, among them “Most Eggcellent,” “Flush,” “King Missle” and “Mellow Yellow.”
Before the drop, Jim Lamb ‘08 and James Chu ‘08 proudly unveiled what they called the “Space Age Teepee,” a tetrahedron of balsa wood and rubber bands with a mylar basket in the middle. Two balloons are tied to the top to slow down the fall and keep the device upright.
The “Lofty Balsam Deluxe Dropper” likewise exploited balloons’ lightweight qualities. Adam Klotz ‘09 used the skills and materials he had acquired as an assistant clown in high school to twist himself an egg-dropping device. The design process was tedious, but according to teammate Niko Reid ‘09, the possible “glory of winning was worth it to us.”
However, creativity clearly did not reign to the exclusion of technical value. The devices were largely successful; out of the dozen entries to participate, only one egg broke from the fall. It was ultimately up to the scoring formula to distinguish between the surviving groups.
After a suspenseful round of calculations, the winners were soon announced, with a score of 682 points: Jon Gabrio ‘07 and Eddie Schlafly ‘07.
“We were inspired by the stiffness of bathroom toilet brushes,” explained Gabrio, a Product Design major. Through a period of rapid prototyping, he and his teammate ultimately found the most effective solution to be two toilet brushes wrapped around a plastic tub that could crumple together upon impact. They also wrapped the egg in wetsuit material to absorb energy.
Apart from being awarded the sheer glory of victory, Gabrio and Schlafly also received a prize of $500.
What’s to come of their winnings?
In the true spirit of engineering, Gabrio will use his prize winnings to fund his project for ME216, Product Design: Implementation.