Saturday, March 7, 2015

Operation Egg Drop

In Operation Egg Drop the Navigators and the Spirits were given the task to design and engineer a working parachute that would bring a raw egg safely to the ground from atop the Big Toy on our playground. 

The Planning Stage:
  • What is our task?
  • Who will do what?
  • What will we need?
  • What are our hypotheses?




The Design Stage:
  • Gathering materials
  • Putting it all together
  • Learning to work together







Test # 1



Conclusions after first test:
  • Most of the parachutes collapse and fall too quickly.




Back to the drawing board:
  • I think...
  • Let's try...
  • What if...






Test #2
  • Bigger parachutes
  • Lighter egg containers
  • Strings that are even lengths
  • Human testers to test crash impact :) 
  • We start to have team names (collaboration at its best!)
  • Some try Leonardo's design









Leonardo da Vinci's design

The final test with a real egg, celebrations and reflections:
  • Although the parachutes don't fully fill up with air and float down, none of the eggs break. 
  • Success! Celebrations!
















Other lessons learned:
  • We almost forgot to try a control. What if the wood chips had softened the blow? So we dropped an egg without a parachute. The wood chips had not softened the blow and it broke!
  • If at first you don't succeed, try, try again! 
  • We can work together, even when it's hard, and can accomplish great things. 

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