Posted by Carly Ayres | Date Posted: 16 November, 2010
If you happened to be in the vicinity of the second floor of 161 South Main yesterday, you may have had an unfortunate encounter with eggs and miscellaneous mechanical devices pelting down on you from the third story. Yesterday the sophomore class ’13 gave their egg drop models a final run in front of all 93 of their peers. The challenge was to create an apparatus weighing less than five pounds, fitting within a 10″ x 10″ x 10″ cube, using no parachutes, cushions, foam, gels, liquids, or electricity — that would transport one egg down a 15′ cable in 59 seconds.
Following those guidelines, the students had one week to prepare their mechanism as well as an accompanying presentation to give to their classmates. The runs involved a multitude of surprises from eggs being flung throughout the lobby to sand pouring out over unprepared student watching from below. The assignment was intended to get the sophomores thinking about function in terms of design. The students solved the challenge via pulley systems, cogs and gears, harmonic motion, timed-released drops, wind-up timers, corkscrews, friction-based mechanisms, as well as exasperated free-falling drops.
Below is a compilation of photos taken from this event as well as a time-lapse video shot by Isaac Blankensmith ’13.
Egg Drop from RISD ID on Vimeo.