Introducing
Mr. Pickle, Lily's winning egg drop container entry into South Florida Science Museum's "Drop It, Build It, Fly It, Launch It, Thrill It" engineering competition on May 5, 2012.
Lily made Mr. Pickle with pieces of a pool noodle. The encasement was an eight (8) inch long piece of pool noodle, split in half. An additional one-quarter piece of pool was used to increase its outer circumference to accomodate the larger diameter of the egg inside. The two pieces were held together with rubber bands around a two "bumpers" from foam egg cartoons and stuffing makeup sponges inside for extra padding.
Success! No breaks for no body!
REDESIGN: With a working prototype, I challenged Lily how small can her egg drop container be? For success, we tried successively shorter heights at lower masses. Field tests were conducted from fifty feet if the container would work if it was only 7 inches, 6 inches, or 5 inches. The final version of
Mr. Pickle which won first place (and $100!) weighed only 73 grams with the egg inside. But the high school winner of "Drop It" weighed 63 grams, 10 grams less! The challenge for 2013 is to lighten Mr. Pickle even further.
