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Product Highlights

• Construct a device to absorb the force from an initial 1-m drop, then use the engineering cycle to design a final model to achieve the highest drop distance.
• Middle school/high school engineering design challenge with enough materials for 15 lab groups.
• Carolina Kits 3D® — Lab activity that designs a solution for an engineering problem to support the NGSS and 3-dimensional instruction.

Students learn about momentum, collisions, impulse, and stopping force as they address the engineering challenge, "How can a container be built to protect fragile cargo during a collision?" Teams start by building cubic, triangular, and cylindrical egg containers, dropping them from increasing heights while evaluating their effectiveness at protecting an egg from damage. Students apply what they have learned to achieve the highest drop in which the egg remains intact, competing in one of 4 design challenges: Single Drop, Three Sides Drop, Limited Mass Drop, or Limited Volume Drop. The activity concludes by entering all the reengineered egg protectors into a classroom competition.

Time Requirement
Total, 210 minutes. Teacher prep, 30 minutes. Background, prototyping, and the design challenge, 105 minutes. Assessment and presentation, 75 minutes.

Digital Resources
Includes 1-year access to digital resources that support 3-dimensional instruction for NGSS. Digital resources may include a teacher manual and student guide, pre-lab activities and setup videos, phenomenon videos, simulations, and post-lab analysis and assessments.

Performance Expectation(s)
HS-PS2-2
HS-PS2-3

Crosscutting Concepts
Structure and Function

Disciplinary Core Ideas
HS.PS2.A: Forces and Motion

Science and Engineering Practices
Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions

Learning Objectives

• Compare the effectiveness of containers of various shapes at protecting a dropped egg.
• Apply the concepts of momentum and force to brainstorm ideas for the design of an egg container.
• Build and test a protective container for a dropped egg.

Prerequisite Knowledge and Skills
Prior knowledge of momentum, collisions, and Newton's third law are useful.