Egg Drop Experiment by Morgan

Egg Drop Experiment by Morgan - March 2014 Scholarship Essay

Looking back at what I have done in high school, I would say getting an A on my egg drop project in my physics class was my greatest academic achievement. The object of this project was to be able to continuously drop an egg off ledges of varying heights without the egg cracking. My classmates and I were required to build a capsule that would hold the egg in place to protect it. Eventually, we were to drop the egg off the roof of the school and make sure it survived the fall. When my teacher assigned the project and split myself and classmates into pairs, I started to worry. I had NO IDEA how I was going to go about this. Physically building things is definitely not my strength. I found that out in my shop class.

The following weekend, I met up with the girl I was paired up with for the egg drop project. We were allowed to do the project however we pleased, with a few small regulations. We were not allowed to use parachutes and our contraption had to fit inside a standard size brown paper grocery bag. Also, our design was required to have a door-like feature to slip an egg in and out of each turn of dropping. We spent some time researching on the internet and decided our best bet would be to try and cushion the egg as much as possible. I suggested bubble wrap and packing peanuts. I have an after school job at a drug and gift store so I drove us there to pick up some supplies. The employees let us take as much bubble wrap and packing peanuts as we wanted, and let us take some boxes of different sizes to try. I bought some tape, too.

We went back to my house and set out all of our supplies to brainstorm. Our goal was to pack the egg in with cushioning as tightly as possible so it wouldn’t move around when it came in contact with the ground. First, we went for the bubble wrap. We took one of the boxes and taped the bubble wrap all around the interior of the box. However, we ran into a problem when we realized we needed to cut the wrap in order for it to fit inside the box. Cutting was not an option because the air leaked out of the bubbles when we tried. Next up was packing peanuts. This worked considerably well, until we realized we needed to be able to open and close the box in order to have a “door”. We weren’t sure how to protect the egg where the door opening was.

After some more thinking, we taped some packing peanuts to the inside of the box flaps (the “door”). When the flaps closed, the packing peanuts touched the top of the egg so it was completely enclosed by packing peanuts. We attempted to drop our box off of the highest places we could find and it survived every toss and turn. To be absolutely sure, we also threw the box at the ground with as much force two teenage girls can produce. We were pretty pleased with the results and went to school the next day with confidence. As expected, our egg survived every fall, including the drop off the school building.

Even though this was just one class project from my life, I think it has impacted me positively in a huge way. I was extremely wary of the project, because I knew it would be a challenge for me. However, I went in with a positive attitude and did just fine. I learned that I can accomplish whatever I want if I have the ambition and drive to do it. I know this will help me in college because I will be facing a whole new variety of issues. I can look back at how I didn’t give up on this project and apply that to how I deal with things that come up in my daily routine. Even though it took a few tries to get our project right, we got it right in the end. Just because something is out of your comfort zone doesn’t mean it’s going to be difficult, it just means you need to tackle it in a different way. Life is boring if you never have anything to work at. I look at hard things like this: the more experience I get with projects, assignments, or anything, the better I will be able to cope with change in new things I am exposed to in the future.