🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 2 May 1995, Jay Cutler wrote:

> Yesterday in a ninth grade high school class we held a contest on "HOW
> HIGH AND HOW MANY TIMES AND HOW HARD AN EGG COULD BE DROPPED IN A PACKAGE
> SMALLER THAN 20 CM X 20 CM X20CM."
> I thought we were studing Newton's second law.  Now I'm not so sure.  The
> package that did by far the best was a container filled with mud packed
> around the egg.

I've long wondered what the point of this exercise was, in a physics
context. What physics could be brought to bear on the problem, in a
manner which would conclusively predict performance of the package. I
thought it more engineering and recreation than a clear-cut demo of a
physics principle. So it's supposed to be a demo of Newton's second law,
you say? I can't see how. It's far more involved than that. Is the
objective merely to allow the shell to survive uncracked? Then the mud
seems a very good idea, and those students should be given credit for
independent thinking, at least (if they had sound *reasons* for choosing
mud).

Seems to me some sophisticated stress analysis is necessary to properly
analyze this task.

> Why does the egg survive the mud package better than foam, popcorn,
> saltwater, and hey! What was the person trying when they put the egg into
> a container of saltwater?

You'd have to ask that person.

        -- Donald