Great day. Good times. Lots of homeschoolers rocking the museum with awesome engineering. Here are some pictures and videos:
Benny and Sadie after their drops. Benny won second place in the two-egg parachute category at 114 grams with both eggs surviving the fall. He also won the prize for the most creative entry in that category:
Here's Sadie with her contraption, which failed to protect its egg. Video of her drop is below:
You can here somebody speculating that she's 18 months old. She was dressed up as a fairy and her egg was pink and sparkly and frilly, but darnit she's in PRESCHOOL! :)
My entry was "Egg Drop Soup" and it did not protect its egg and did not win anything.
I didn't get any pictures or video of Benny, partly because I pushed the wrong button during his drop and ended up filming my collarbone for like 5 minutes. So ironically the one in the family who built a successful contraption and won prizes did not get documented!
However, I do have video of our friends Zoe and Ben. Zoe won in her category for the lightest successful contraption! Very cool.
Here's Zoe's drop:
And Ben's drop:
So I did get *some* good video! Just not of my own children! :) :) I was proud of all the kids in our little group: Josh, Austin, Zoe, Phillip, Ben, Shira, Benny, and Sadie. We were all very good sports, supporting each other, cheering and hollering, and celebrating physics. It's such an awesome event, because little brainy smart kids get to receive hoots, cheers, and yodels just like the football players. I deeply enjoy myself every year at the Egg Drop contest. It is a great experience for the children and the adults alike.
Eggs drop. Contraptions smashed. Yolks splattered. And at the end of the day there was a small pile of eggs that survived the fall. Amazing!
The concept of an egg drop is simple. Create a contraption that will stop an egg from cracking when dropped from a balcony onto a target. The lightest contraption that hits closest to the target and protects the egg wins. Yesterday we all participated in an egg drop at the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton. Benny won his category -- it was very exciting! And Dan and I even got in on the action.
It started over a month ago, when Benny's first contraption idea was to wrap the egg in a bunch of layers of scotch tape. I was determined to stay out of his creative/scientific process, so I quietly let him work away on his tape egg, then we hurled it off our second floor porch, and it smashed on the sidewalk. From these drippy, yolky, messy beginnings came the journey that would lead him to a successful drop on the day of the contest. I'm happy to say I resisted the urge to make his project for him. It was a strong urge, but I let him struggle on, through five designs that failed miserably, to the one that worked. We provided the materials, asked that he write down his plan for each design and also his results, and let him do the rest.
Here's one of his design plans:
Here's one of his test runs:
Here are a couple of videos that map the process a bit:
Finally a successful design. And egg drop day arrived. When we got to VASC we realized there were bazillions of homeschoolers there. This was awesome. We watched the parachute category, and as each kid was announced as a homeschooler, Benny cheered rambunctiously. When a kid from an elementary school was introduced, Benny would shake his head and say something sorrowful, like, "Oh, brace yourselves. Another schooled child." At first I thought I should correct this behavior... but then I thought, no. Kids in school are encouraged to have "school spirit" so why shouldn't homeschoolers have "unschool spirit"? As long as he wasn't being unkind or obnoxious, I decided to let him root for his homeschool team. Anyway, he has lots of friends who go to school and he doesn't recoil from them as if they're lepers or anything. As long as I don't see him crossing the street to avoid a kid from school, I think he'll be alright.
As it turned out, Benny won the two-egg category. His was the only contraption that kept both his eggs safe. Here's a video of the drop itself, and the award ceremony:
Here are a few pictures from the event:
Here's Benny (holding my egg-dropping contraption) with another child and her mother. They called their contraption Chicken Little and had thematic outfits -- we love it!
Here's Benny with Dr. Byles from VASC, and Tom Finley, one of the adult winners. Benny has two medals because he also won for the most creative design in his category.
The egg drop contest was a lot of fun. I really appreciate the people who set it up, made it happen, and cleaned up all those smashed eggs.
I have many more pictures of the event in my Flickr set from the egg drop. I highly encourage anyone with a gadget-minded child to seek out an egg drop and get to dropping. It was an excellent learning experience for Benny, and a good time for the whole family.
