Egg Drop Contraption
Brainstorming/Original Design
In order to ensure a successful landing, we had to create a contraption in order to safely land our egg back on the ground. The text below outlines the design process we went through to create this contraption.
Our original design involved having a contraption made of straws, and attaching a parachute to it using string. This design came from previous designs shown on YouTube (see research section) merged with our own original ideas, and is shown to the right. We decided to use a straw contraption to hold the actual egg, because it would be a stronger (we used E6000 glue) and lighter (for liftoff) option. We also decided to use bubble wrap to enclose the egg, and cover the outside walls. The other major part of our original contraption was the parachute. The parachute was made out of nylon fabric, to create maximum drag throughout the egg's journey towards the ground. Lastly, to connect the parachute to the straws, we used strong string; this connected each pair of the parachutes corners to one of the three corners of the triangular straw contraption. We were satisfied with this contraption, for the most part, until the day of egg testing. This was because of both time constraints and entangling/untying of strings.
Slow Motion
Real Time
Reflection
Our egg survived! On December 13th, 2016, we tested our egg drop contraption by dropping our egg from the top of the bleachers, and it survived. The pictures to the right show the condition of our contraption directly after we dropped the egg (shown in the pictures above). On impact, the contraption made a snapping sound, but we think that was just the bubble wrap. As you can see, our parachute worked moderately well and the straws/bubble wrap protected the egg from impact surprisingly well. Now that we have dropped the egg, we need to start considering the ejection process, as well as how we will fit the contraption into the rocket. There are still a lot of improvements we could make, including making a bigger parachute, creating a more compact design, and making a better connection between the parachute and the straws.
After dropping our egg we made multiple improvements to be used in the launch:
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1. We made our contraption more rocket-friendly:
We shrank the size of our contraption so it would fit in rocket better.
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2. We made a new contraption inside of the nosecone of our rocket (which is made of styrofoam):
Although we had already made our contraption smaller, we thought that making our contraption inside the nosecone would make it easier to release the egg and parachute.
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3. We made the parachute smaller:
Since our parachute did not catch the amount of air we wanted we wanted, we decided to make the parachute bigger to increase drag.
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4. We made all of the parachute strings attach to one point:
We though this would help our parachute expand better, as well as preventing a mess (where the strings are tangled and untied)
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5. We were more careful in construction:
When we made the contraption the first time, we were rushed to make it before the egg drop testing. This time we will try to be more efficient so we will not be rushed right before launch.
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Note: The parachute size was also changed, but not until after break. To see more information on this, see the Weight Modifications page.