June 10, 2013 - 7:56am
Egg Drop Challenge
My daughter's class is challenged to fill a 1Qt. Ziplock bag with "anything" that will
protect and egg falling from the school balcony.
Of course the best elastic and air pocketed subsatnace would be the perfect bread dough!
I think that my Tartine dough after 4 hours of bulk at 80 Deg F should have the
right ammount of air pockets and elasticity to save the egg.
Or maybe just a simple white flour dough after 2-3 hours of bulk...
Please send recipies and thoughts!
Thanks
David
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I would be tempted to go with a plain commercial yeast dough to allow for stronger rise/faster recovery than sourdough in case it gets deflated a bit.
And heck, if the egg breaks you can just make Sally Lunn bread ;-)
filled with air and all the size of eggs or smaller all around with the real egg in the middle.
Not unlike NASA's approach landing some of the early rovers on Mars.
David G
:)
Can't help but think about a space capsule surrounded in slowly growing sourdough and baking on entry hoping for a good spring before a bouncy landing. How small would the inoculation have to be? Would the dough travel frozen most of the time? Think about the potential of having rations on the outside of the ship? Just my crazy thoughts...
Raw dough is going to be fairly heavy (relative to weight of the egg). That might lead to enough force being generated by the portion of the dough that is on top of the egg at the moment of impact to crush the eggshell.
Even allowing for the cellular structure of the risen dough, it seems that the dough will have enough characteristis of a fluid that it would transmit much of the force of the impact via hydraulic shock to the egg.
Then again, I could be way off base. The only way to know for sure is to try it out.
Paul
I would use spray foam insulation...the stuff in the can. Grease the egg before spraying so the insulation won't stick to the egg. The stuff expands a lot so the trick will be to fill the bag without overfilling.
wrap the egg in soft flexible foam and then in a layer of bubble wrap. Fill the rest fo the bag with rubber bands. Then drop it into a really soft pillow:-) I can see why they want everything in a zip lock bag - really helps with the clean up.
Natural sponge... Use a big Ziploc filled with natural sponge because it is light but resilient, with the egg tucked in the center. Then "inflate" the Ziploc to low pressure with helium from a party balloon. The helium would reduce the "net weight" of the package allowing a softer landing, and the sponges would cushion it even further.
Free advice: Always worth what you pay for it!
Best of luck
OldWoodenSpoon
If you're going to use helium, you might as well just leave everything else out and put in enough helium to float the egg.
Problem solved... :-)
I did consider that, but figured that the limit would be the size of the bag. Assuming that the largest acceptable bag would be the gallon sized freezer bag, it would not be possible to get enough helium into it to support the egg, but it would be enough to net out to a pretty light weight. Hence, some shock absorbing medium is still required. Sponges are light and porous, so they don't limit the helium volume as much as more solid materials (dough, etc.) would. The sponges are my typical over-engineering response to such a problem. Left up to me, though, I'd just bag the egg, drop it off the balcony, and then toss it. I'm no big fan of eggs by themselves anyway. :)
Good luck with this. It is a fun project.
OldWoodenSpoon
This has been quite fun....
If she accepts some ideas from her father and "friends" I'll let you all know...
Thanks!
a parachute? it could be propped open like an umbrella with thin balsa sticks and the egg needs little if any wrapping. heck a kitchen sponge would do!
It seems to me if you fill the bag to the limit with popped popcorn, that ought to do the trick.