Plains High School egg drop
PAUL PICKERING dropping one of several devices designed to protect an egg from the concrete below. (John Dowd/Clark Fork Valley Press)
THE PHYSICS class gathered around the corner outside the Plains Schools gymnasium to drop their eggs and test if they will survive. (John Dowd/Clark Fork Valley Press)
FROM LEFT to right, are Nathan McNulty, Andrew Harmon, Kade Pardee, Mason Gannarelli, Conrad Vanderwall, Wiley Scribner, watch one of the devices as it fails to protect an egg as it landed on the concrete. (John Dowd/Clark Fork Valley Press)
Two decades and counting
By JOHN DOWD
Valley Press
A decades-long tradition continued recently as the Plains High School physics class gathered outside in the chilly fall air to test their understanding of gravity.
Carl Benson, who has taught earth science, biology, chemistry and physics at Plains schools for nearly 36 years, had his students partake in a special activity that has occurred for more than 20 years.
Many years ago Benson came across an interesting way to get his students more involved and interested in physics and its application to the real world.
The project has changed a lot over the years, however the core goal has stayed the same: take an egg and drop it off of a building without it breaking.
Originally Benson allowed his class to use whatever they could find to make something to protect the egg.
But after a student welded a metal contraption together which ended up denting the pavement one year, Benson decided to provide the materials instead.
This achieved several additional things, along with protecting school property, he found that by constricting the available materials, he could get his class to challenge themselves more and to drive them to put more effort into designing a successful device.
This year the materials he provided included one stick of clay, 10 rubber bands, several pipe cleaners, one plastic bag (that they were not allowed to use as a parachute), eight wooden tongue depressors, hot glue, and a paper-sized piece of thin crafting foam.
Students came up with all kinds of designs to armor their perspective eggs from their impending demise. The eventual drop spanned about 43 feet, so the protection would have to keep the egg alive after quite a distance on to a hard sidewalk.
Students had about a week to design, build and prepare their egg-armor. Once the time was up the class gathered one morning outside the school gym where they would drop their builds into a bucket that was then hoisted up, onto the roof of the gymnasium. There, the constructions were dropped, one by one, by the school’s head maintenance man, Paul Pickering.
For Benson, it’s his favorite class of the year.
“Feels like a good day to drop some eggs,” he said on the chilly morning of the drop.
His students feel the same way.
Before they dropped the devices, they measured and weighed each one to determine the winners at the end of the drop. Since the posibility existed that several eggs could survive, the winner needed to be determined by the smallest saving device.
The four surviving egg projects were made by: Charlie Rehbein with a mass of 90.5 grams, Kade Pardee with a mass of 73 grams, Andrew Harmon with a mass of 123 grams and the winner Mason Gannarelli whose device had a mass of 43 grams.
“Gannarelli’s capsule fell perfectly and landed with the tongue depressor sticks facing downward,” said Benson.