All in the name of science

Dropping eggs off the gymnasium roof at Plains High School was not a prank – it was done in the name of science.

Plains High School maintenance supervisor Bill Hayen has been the official egg dropper for Carl Benson's physics class "Egg Drop Project" for some 20 years. He's seen some interesting contraptions. "There are a lot of duties that come with this job, but this in a fun one," said Hayen, who dropped each student's project from the roof to the pavement below. The idea for the class was to create a protective carrier so the egg would survive the 43-foot drop to the pavement. Each year, Benson's science students make a protective carrier used to house a raw egg.

The project is a way for Benson to get his message across to the students in a fun way. The egg drop is part of the Newton's Laws of Motion. "An object in motion will stay in motion in a straight line unless some force acts on it," said Benson, who's been teaching for 34 years. At Plains High School, it shows how concrete can influence an egg's integrity, said Benson.

He believes using fun projects to teach dry lessons helps them remember the material. A practical exercise helps them put the concepts together and they better understand the information and it gives the students a practical example of the concepts they are studying, said Benson. "It also inspires creativity in building a contraption." One former physics student went on to work for NASA. "We may be a small school, but we produce some amazing professional people," said Benson.

This year's students, all seniors, worked on their protective contraptions for about two weeks. The materials and finished products have varied over the years, but this year they could only use the materials Benson purchased: pipe cleaners, plastic straws, bubble wrap, rubber bands, corkboard, and cotton.

"They have to really think about how they put it together to make sure that egg survives," said Benson, who tries to make it different each year. He said there have been some interesting egg casings over the years. One year, a student made his entirely of rubber bands and it survived. A couple years ago Tia Thompson protected her egg with marshmallows. Former student Kenny Carpenter had the lightest one in Plains egg-drop history with a Styrofoam apparatus. Paul Haines several years ago created a toothpick contraption. Benson said he's considering having next year's class do their project totally from toothpicks.

He's never had a class where none of the eggs survived, although it's been close. Students get only one egg, but they can test their device on their own with their own eggs. Some drop their devices from the roof of their home or from a second story window, without an egg enclosed, to see how the device will hold up. Of the more than 300 eggs he's purchased for the project over the years, about two dozen of them survived the fall.

The students have to keep a record of their device's specifications. They're graded on their designs and get extra credit if their egg survives. In a bucket, Hayen hoisted one student's project at a time. First tested was Luke Lile's contraption, which he named "Livin' on a Prayer." It took 1.485 seconds for his 125.4-gram device to hit the ground and it was a success. The only other student to name his vessel was Daniel Uli. He called his 46.6-gram device "The Champion," but when it struck the ground, which took only 1.39 seconds, he discovered it was no champion. Only two other students' eggs survived the fall. Jessica Thompson housed her egg is a device that weighed 110 grams and took 1.2 seconds to make it to the ground.

The winner of the competition was Anjel Martinez, whose 109-gram device fell to the pavement in 1.4 seconds intact, giving him 20 bonus points. Martinez used cotton around the egg with bubble wrap around the cotton, surrounded by corkboard, then more bubble wrap. It took him between three and four hours to build his device. He said the idea for his casing came from human psychology. "We put so many layers around us to protect ourselves, I thought the same thing would work with the egg," said the 17-year-old Martinez, who didn't think it would survive the fall, especially after he heard the sound of it hitting the ground. "I was extremely pleased to get the extra points because I'm only average in physics," he said.

Kara Altmiller invited her father, Jason, to watch her project, which weighed 65.4 grams, soar through the air. It took 1.3 seconds and her egg ended up being the most scrambled, according to Benson. The remaining students' eggs did not survive the fall. Ilanna Chaney's device weighed 48.3 grams and sped to the ground in 1.21 seconds. It took Brandon Managhan 108.6-gram device 1.44 seconds to hit the ground.

"Overall, they did a great job," said Benson, who added that the project is fun for him, too, because he gets to see some unique devices. "There was a lot of creativity and individualized experimentation. It gives me a chance to see their creative side and they really get into the competition," he said.

Benson has used fun ideas for other teaching other projects, such as rocket launching to educate them about the concepts of impulse, velocity, and height calculations. They've also constructed model airplanes to teach Bernoulli's Principle of airflow, gravity, and other aspects of aerodynamics.