Egg Lander 2

Egg Lander 2

With my new group, we have decided to build an hourglass shaped egg lander, with straws connecting each end to form a rectangular prism. It is composed of two identical trapezoidal pyramids with the egg secured in the middle between the two pyramids.

We thought that the hourglass shape was a good idea because it was symmetrical. Once again, we tried to emphasise flexibility of the structure, but we didn't have enough straws left to make a bouncy base. However, we did try to make the surface area of the pyramid greater so it would absorb more impact. The egg holder was the good old straws interlocking each other to hold it in place. The leftover straws were not enough to make bouncy paddings of the shape # but we did use them to connect each vertex of the pyramids to another.

However, one thing we neglected again was aerodynamics. Our structure was already pretty heavy, with 24 straws and a decent amount of tape, and it was in no way aerodynamic. Our structure also failed to keep a perfect shape. As you can see from the above picture, the top pyramid's square was bent compared to the bottom pyramid's square.

I don't have a picture of our egg lander after it's dropped, but to put it nicely the egg broke again. One group that did a similar design as ours had successfully protected the egg during the drop. They had a prism with straws holding the egg in the middle too, but they attached the straws from the edges, not from the vertex, where support was apparently weak. In my group's defence  I can say that our design was pretty good except we neglected aerodynamics and underestimated the structure of the egg holding mechanism. If in the future I ever build another egg lander, I would follow Mr. Chung's advice by making a sling shape egg lander since it uses very little straws and is also aerodynamic.