Egg Drop and Other Challenges

As I mentioned in my last post, I am focusing on Engineering Practice with my 7th grade group. We did a paper tower challenge - they received 20 pieces of paper, 1m of tape and 10min. Students were judged on height and stability. The winning group's tower stood 62in tall, and almost reached the ceiling from the table top!

When thinking of what to do next, I asked for suggestions. And, almost immediately they decided on the Egg Drop. They had never done it, so we took 1 day to plan, 1 day to build and finalize the design for drop on the third day. To make it a bit more difficult, I asked that they stay within a few parameters:

I was pretty rigid on this and if they wanted to swap something out, they had to get permission from me first. Below are the products from each class:

We went out to the track and dropped from different steps on the bleachers and I had 9 groups make it past the top of the bleachers, so we went up into the press box. There were 3 eggs broken by the fall, 3 eggs survived but their containers did not and 3 eggs and containers completely survive the drop. SUCCESS!!

We took a day and a half to watch Mythbusters: Unchained Reaction on Youtube. The students thought it was really cool. And, yesterday we began designing our own Rube Goldberg machines. This time there were no specifications and few limitations - other than having 5 steps to accomplish the task they chose. Most students are totally on board and are having fun. I did have one student get frustrated. I think that the group was having a hard time deciding on their task and I heard "This isn't fun, it's just too hard." Hopefully their opinion will change as we go on!

#NGSS