Egg Drop Challenge a smashing success
Rob Zolman
Mr. Ness stands with egg drop winners Kaleb Brown, Juliana Gingell, Troy Pierce and Liam Shepard as they hold up their unbroken eggs.
Rob Zolman
Pablo Elementary principal Mr. Fisher drops one of the students' egg projects from the school roof.
Rob Zolman
Pablo Elementary fourth-grader Daniel Santos walks back to his seat with a broken egg.
Rob Zolman
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PABLO — Students from both Ms. Fishers and Mrs. Buck’s fourth-grade classes at Pablo Elementary School put their creativity, ingenuity and problem-solving skills to the test on Thursday afternoon during the second annual Egg Drop Challenge.
Fisher explained that the challenge is an annual springtime event held at the Pablo school to encourage students to come up with creative designs for a cushioning contraption using various materials that will protect a raw egg from breaking when landing from a high fall. The project also helps students explore basic scientific concepts such as gravity, force and acceleration.
Some of the creative containers students used to get their eggs safely to the ground included cardboard boxes, plastic fruit containers, stuffed toys and empty water bottles.
Materials such as recycled plastic shopping bags, bubble wrap, Styrofoam, sponges and even canned spray foam were utilized by the fourth-grade engineers as cushioning inside their egg containers.
“It was really fun,” said Nevaeh Draper. “I saw a plastic strawberry container on Ms. Fisher’s table and asked to use it. I glued some foam inside of it that I got from my mom.”
Perched atop of the school’s roof, principal Ryan Fisher launched each egg project as 70 students chanted, “Drop it!”
Although plastic strawberry containers maybe great for holding berries, Draper disappointingly acknowledged that they are not suitable for an uncooked egg dropped from a roof.
In total, 22 containers were catapulted off the school’s roof. Egg containers designed by Haley Kuhns, Derrick Hammer, Edgar Vejez Pete, Kaleb Brown, Juliana Gingell, Troy Pierce and Liam Shepard were the only unsquashed survivors.
Liam Shepard, a student in Mrs. Buck’s class, saw his project surprisingly make it through without a crack. Shepard’s project design was an egg encased in a roll of double-ply toilet paper with the ends being capped off with cotton balls and tape.
“I was just thinking in my room,” Shepard said explaining how he came up with his idea. “I just figured it out. I asked my mom to give me some toilet paper and some cotton balls.”
Many projects were elaborate in design, but Kaleb Brown found simplicity worked best. Brown‘s egg withstood the impact by being stuffed in a jar of creamy peanut butter.
After noticing how smashing popular the Egg Drop Challenge has been with the students the last couple of years, Ms. Fisher along with other event organizers plan to expand the challenge to include other classes next year.
