STEM Students Hold Egg Drop Competition

Many of Penn’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) classes got Spring rolling by competing in the Egg Drop Competition on Thursday, March 29. Click here for a photo gallery of the event.

This event is considered a classic engineering and design competition. The goal is for students to construct a device that will support and prevent a raw egg from breaking when dropped from a height of about five meters (about 16 feet). 

Participating classes prepare for the competition by spending a class or two designing their egg- supporting apparatus.

The designing, building and scoring was based on a scoring system for the materials used. The materials students can use range from masking tape, string, popsicle sticks, clay to cotton balls and more. Each material has a specific point value assigned to it that must be taken into consideration when building since each team is allowed a maximum of 50 points. The reason for this is to limit the number of supplies that can be used by the students. So, students must be very creative choosing their effective materials within the 50-point allotment.

The two restrictions for the devices were that they had to fit into a 30cm x 30cm x 30cm box, and only materials from the list could be used. Any deviation from these two rules results in disqualification.

Scoring for the competition was based on performance, the mass of the device and use of special structures such as a parachute, wings, etc. In the case of a tie, the winner was determined by the lowest mass.

Please see a photo gallery below. To download a  high resolution jpg file from the photo gallery, just simply click the “DOWNLOAD” button on the bottom right hand corner of the photo while viewing it in the Photo Gallery function.