Physics Science Fair Project – The Egg Drop

The egg drop. It is such a classic physics science fair project. The egg drop is easy to do, has cool results and you have all the items you need on hand. I promise.  Look in your fridge and the rubbish bin, add some tape and you’ve got a really fun science project to do with the kids. Use the egg drop at home, in the classroom or as the starting point for a more elaborate science fair project idea.

Egg Drop Experiment – The Basics

The point of the Egg Drop experiment is to protect an egg to such a degree that you can drop it to the ground from a specified height and your egg will still be intact and unbroken after impact.  

Related: Easy Science Fair Projects

You can see how many of the lessons learned from the egg drop experiment are ones that are tested in automobiles as engineers work to keep us safe by designing cars in such a way that they protect us if we ever are in an accident.

Why the Egg Drop Experiment is So Good for Kids

One of the reasons I really like doing the egg drop experiment with kids of any school age is that it requires them to go about the scientific process without thinking about it. Use our scientific method worksheet for kids.

1. Observation: Kids can look at the height and potentially what other things have been tried for keeping an egg safe and what properties that the materials they have available to them hold.
2. Question: How to keep an egg from breaking during dropping?
3. Hypothesis: Kids can make an educated guess about what could keep the egg safe.
4. Experiment: Kids can design and either prove that their hypothesis was right or help clean up the mess at the bottom!
5. Conclusion: Analyze the results and determine if the hypothesis was right <–good scientific data results whether the hypothesis was right or not!
6. Result: What did you learn? What might you change next time? Do you have a new idea for an improved egg drop method?

Ways to Decrease the Egg Drop Impact

• You may want to cushion the egg (i.e. adapt the surface it falls on).  You can do this by putting pillows down for your egg to land on.
• You may want to change the rate of the fall.  You can do this with a parachute or by having your egg fall alongside a sheet.
• You also may want to add a harness or protection around the egg as a “case” that absorbs the impact.

Whatever your method the goal is the same.  No broken eggs.

Our Egg Drop Experiment [Video]

advanced Egg Drop Ideas

Okay, so let’s say your child isn’t in preschool and they really, really want to win that science fair project with the best and lets say smallest, or most lightweigh egg container for their drop.  You want to seriously “up” your egg drop game.

Check out this second video – There are lots of little tricks that you can do to improve your egg “harness” and take your science fair project to the next level!

More Science Fun from Kids Activities Blog

What was your egg drop strategy? Did it work?