🥚 Egg drop padding: the whole packet

🥚 Egg drop padding · 3rd–8th grade · 1 day of testing · about $3 · 60 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 14 days away

Count back from your fair day and write in each date. Fewer days than this? The jobs share days, in this order; nothing is skipped.

Dates from my teacher

• My question is due
• Testing starts
• My results table and graph are due
• My board is due

In this packet

1. 🗓️ My project plan
2. 💭 My hypothesis
3. 🧺 Change, measure, keep the same
4. 🪜 My steps
5. 📊 My results
6. 📓 My logbook
7. ✅ My conclusion
8. ✂️ Board titles to cut out
9. 🏅 The judge's questions and my certificate

If I change the padding packed around the egg, then how many drops the egg comes through without a crack will ________________, because _____________________________________________

What I think will happen, in my own words:

3 levels × 3 tries at each = 9 tries in all. If anything you keep the same changes, you won't know which change made the difference.

What I need

• 🥚 Eggs: a dozen raw eggs
• 🛍️ Plastic bags: zip bags, one for each egg
• 🥤 Paper cups: 6, the same size
• 📄 Paper: 4 sheets, crumpled
• ☁️ Cotton balls
• 🫧 Bubble wrap
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• 🧽 A sponge or cloth, for wiping up
• 🩹 Tape

Be safe: 🧍 Drop from standing: never climb · 🧼 Wash your hands after · 🚫 Test food is not for eating · 🧽 A bit messy

1. Put each raw egg in its own zip bag, pressed flat round it, so a crack stays tidy.
2. Fill the bottom of three cups with padding: crumpled paper, cotton balls or bubble wrap.
3. Nestle a bagged egg in each, pack the same padding all round it, and tape a cup on top as a lid.
4. Put a masking tape mark on the wall 1 m above a hard floor.
5. Stand on the floor and drop the crumpled paper cup from the mark. Never climb on anything.
6. Peel back the lid and check the egg: if it's whole, close it and drop it again.
7. Write down how many drops it came through whole, and stop at 10 if it never cracks.
8. Do the same with the cotton ball cup and the bubble wrap cup.
9. Do the whole test two more times, with a new egg wherever one cracked.
10. Wash your hands after touching raw egg, and throw the dropped eggs away.
11. Find the mean for each padding and draw a bar graph.

Write each number in your results table the moment you measure it.

I changed: Padding   I measured: how many drops the egg comes through without a crack (drops)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: padding along the bottom, drops up the side)

What I noticed: ______________________________________________

Write something every day you work on it, even the days you only gather things. More days? The three-page logbook prints from peabody.kids/science-fair/templates/logbook.

My hypothesis was ☐ right ☐ partly right ☐ not right.

I know because my numbers show:

What surprised me, or what might have gone wrong (7th and up):

Next time I would test:

Idea: Change a second thing: test each padding packed loosely and packed tight, and draw a bar for all six.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: which padding keeps a dropped egg from cracking?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing the padding packed around the egg would change how many drops the egg comes through without a crack, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed the padding packed around the egg (Crumpled paper, Cotton balls, Bubble wrap) and measured how many drops the egg comes through without a crack in drops.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same size of cup, with a second cup taped on as a lid and the same amount of padding, packed full the same, so only the padding packed around the egg was different.
5. How many times did you test it? Say something like: 3 times at each of my 3 levels, and I found the middle number.
6. What did you find out? Show me in your numbers. Say something like: Look at my table: Crumpled paper and Bubble wrap gave different numbers, and here's the pattern.
7. Was your hypothesis right? How do you know? Say something like: My numbers show whether I was right, partly right or not, and I can show you where.
8. Did anything go wrong, or surprise you? Say something like: One try was odd, so I did it again and wrote it in my logbook.
9. If you did it again, what would you change or test next? Say something like: I'd change a second thing: test each padding packed loosely and packed tight, and draw a bar for all six.