Egg Parachute

Last class we made a working parachute to hold an egg and stop it from breaking upon hitting the ground. Our parachute worked very well, we faced a big challenge with keeping the string in place so the parachute wouldn't collapse in on itself. We ended up using wires to keep the parachute's form strong. This wouldn't work in a normal parachute because wire is hard to neatly pack in a tight space and open in a predictable way. The next thing my partner and I had to deal with was the materials to make the parachute itself. We used a shopping bag, wire, a can and some Styrofoam. My partner and I didn't know how reliable the parts would be, but all the materials worked really well together and the egg only had one crack on landing. Overall I learned a lot about working with what you have on hand and making working parachutes by paying attention to detail such as the diameter of the centre hole of the parachute and how it effects landing.

fig 1. This is the egg we used it was crushed shortly after this was taken

These 3 videos are the egg being dropped off the railing from 3 different perspectives. The egg was mostly intact each time it fell, we think we succeeded in keeping the egg safe.