Annual egg drop a smash hit for Independent Day School students

Reed Berlet had a bad feeling his egg was not going to survive. But at least it had a dramatic death.

He had housed it in a foam contraption with little flaps on the side that were supposed to catch the air and slow its free fall.

The Independent Day School eighth-grader looked over the side of Raymond James Stadium and let his handiwork fly. Just as he released it, a gust of wind carried it back toward the stadium, where it landed in a stairwell below him.

Reed, 14, ran down and tossed the egg again. This time, the flaps broke off and the container landed heavily.

"Did it make it? Did it make it?" Reed called.

The verdict came from the ground: thumbs down.

Independent Day School students took to the top of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' home stadium last week for the final phase in an annual class project on man's creations. Students use physics knowledge of air friction, terminal velocity and gravity to build containers to protect an egg as it falls.

Science teacher Gery Morey created the unit about 20 years ago, starting with students dropping their eggs off a University of South Florida classroom building.

"But that wasn't high enough," Morey said.

Now the students go to Raymond James Stadium each year to see how their eggs fare after a 95-foot plummet toward concrete. Teachers mark a rectangular splash zone in plastic that the students aim for, although the wind last week sent many creations careening unpredictably.

But the project is not all about the mechanics of science.

Independent Day School, a private school in Carrollwood, follows the International Baccalaureate curriculum, which takes a global perspective and poses big-picture questions to students. The egg drop fell into a broader discussion of "what are the consequences of our creations," Morey said.

Students think about inventions that changed history – such as computers, cars or medicines. They talk about whether creations had good purposes but negative consequences and the ways the world changed because of them.

The students first do the unit as seventh-graders, with a second chance to shield their eggs in eighth grade.

Some modify the containers they built in seventh grade, using what they learned from failure the year before to try again with some adjustments. Others attempt a completely different model.

David Friedman's oatmeal container studded with paper plates did the job perfectly, Morey said.

David, 14, cushioned the egg with balloons inside the oatmeal box, and the plates caught air and helped slow the tube's fall.

The containers had to conform to size limits, and eggs had to be suspended within them.

Students could include two eggs for extra credit.

Both of Grace Rogers' eggs made it. The 14-year-old suspended them in pantyhose inside a bubble-wrapped box. Her only problem was that the wind almost blew the box into one of her teachers.

Daniela Nasser, 14, attached pink and orange balloons to her container, thinking they would pop on impact and cushion its landing.

The balloons never popped, but her egg was unscathed.

Students cheered each other on and chattered about their favorite mishaps – the box that exploded into dozens of packing peanuts, the one that kept blowing back into the stadium, the container that fell apart mid-air, leaving the egg to splatter. The survivors posed with their victorious creations.

"It was fun watching them go," Daniela said.

cpastor@tampatrib.com

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