Take the egg drop challenge for an awesome STEM project for young kids and older ones! Read on to find out how the egg drop challenge works and what the best materials are for an egg drop, and grab the free printable guide.
Take the Egg Drop Challenge
Create your own egg drop designs to protect your egg from breaking when it is dropped from a height.
Egg drop challenges are super cool and make for terrific STEM activities! I have been waiting to do a classic egg drop project for some time with my son but felt like he was too young.
The goal of the egg drop challenge is to drop your egg from a height without it breaking when it hits the ground.
Most egg drop projects use many loose materials, design making, and tinkering that my son isn’t ready for yet. I thought we could expand on it by using materials in our kitchen to protect the eggs including ziptop bags to control the mess.
Grab the FREE Printable Egg Drop Worksheets!
What are the Best Materials for an Egg Drop?
Below are two versions of this egg drop challenge, one for older and one for younger kids. Do you need real eggs? Usually, I would say yes, but given the circumstances, how about candy-filled plastic eggs? If you don’t want to waste food for any reason, don’t! Find a workaround instead.
Egg Drop Ideas for Older Kids
Older kids will love coming up with ideas to protect the egg in an egg drop. Egg drop designs can be more involved the older a kid gets, making this a great activity to try each year. Some materials they may want to use…
- Packaging materials
- Tissue
- Old T-shirts or rags
- Recycling container goodies
- Styrofoam
- String
- Bags
- And so much more!
Here’s a past year’s winner in the egg drop challenge! It even included a plastic bag parachute!
Egg Drop Ideas for Younger Kids
You will need eggs and plastic zip-top bags to contain the mess! How many is up to you? We had seven bags left, so we came up with six items from around the kitchen to fill the bags and protect the eggs, and one with nothing.
I tried to pick items that weren’t too wasteful, and we had a few expired and unused items in the pantry. Some materials you could use to protect the egg…
- water
- ice
- paper towels
- dry cereal {we used very old wheat puffs}
- flour
- cups
- nothing
Best Egg Drop Design Ideas
Here are ten simple egg-drop design ideas for kids to try.
TIP: Tape and rubber bands are great to have on hand for securing constructions.
1. Parachute Design
Attach a parachute made from a plastic bag or thin fabric to slow down the descent of the egg. Experiment with different parachute sizes and shapes.
Materials: Plastic bags, fabric scraps, tissue paper.
2. Cup and String Contraption
Suspend the egg inside a cup using strings or rubber bands. The cup absorbs some of the impact, and the strings provide additional support.
Materials: Paper cups, rubber bands, string or yarn.
3. Bubble Wrap Encasement
Wrap the egg in several layers of bubble wrap to provide cushioning and protection. Secure the bubble wrap with tape.
Materials: Bubble wrap, packing peanuts, tissue paper.
4. Straw Structure
Create a protective structure using straws. Arrange the straws to form a cage around the egg, leaving enough space for the egg to be cradled safely.
Materials: Plastic or paper straws.
5. Balloon Cushioning
Inflate a balloon and tape it securely around the egg. The balloon acts as a cushion during the fall.
Materials: Regular balloons.
6. Cotton Ball Padding
Surround the egg with a thick layer of cotton balls or cotton padding. This can absorb some of the impact forces upon landing.
Materials: Cotton balls, cotton pads, sponge, foam padding.
7. Foam Container
Place the egg inside a small foam container, such as a foam cup or takeout container. The foam absorbs and disperses the impact energy.
Materials: Plastic containers, foam cups, paper cups, small boxes.
8. Paper Mache Shell
Create a protective shell for the egg using paper mache. The hardened shell provides a protective barrier against impact.
Materials: Newspapers, flour, water.
9. Cardboard Tube Construction
Use cardboard tubes (toilet paper rolls or paper towel rolls) to create a protective structure around the egg. Arrange the tubes to form a cradle for the egg.
Materials: Cardboard sheets, cardboard tubes.
10. Feathered Landing
Attach feathers to the egg to slow down its descent. The feathers create drag, reducing the speed at which the egg falls.
Materials: Bird feathers or craft feathers.
Remember to encourage students to test and refine their designs. They can vary the drop height or make adjustments to improve the performance of their egg drop contraptions. Additionally, discussing the science behind each design choice can add to the learning experience.
5 Ways To Extend The Challenge
Want to turn this fun science activity into a science fair project? Check out these helpful resources.
Investigate Different Types Of Materials
Get students to design a container for the egg using various materials like paper, cardboard, plastic, and foam. Then, compare which material offers the best protection.
Shape Experiment
Explore the impact of the shape of the container on the egg’s safety. Students can create different shapes, such as cubes, spheres, or pyramids, and see which one works best.
Parachute Design
Challenge students to design a parachute system that slows down the egg’s descent. This adds an aerodynamics element to the project.
Weight Constraint
Introduce the maximum weight constraint for the entire contraption. This requires students to think about the trade-off between protection and weight.
Altitude Variations
Change the height from which the egg is dropped. Ask students to adjust their designs for different drop heights and explain how they made these adjustments.
Check Our Our First Egg Drop Experiment
The first egg drop challenge had to be the egg in the zip-top bag. We had to ensure the bag wasn’t protecting the egg, right? Crash and splat went that egg drop. Since it’s already in a bag, I might as well squish it around!
We continued with the egg drop challenge, testing each bag and then examining the contents. This egg drop project had some clear winners!
Ideas that failed!
Obviously, the egg did not fare well with no protection. It also didn’t make it through an egg drop in water or ice. Note: We tried the water twice: once with 8 cups and once with 4 cups.
Egg Drop Ideas that Worked!
However, the egg drop did make it through the crazy cup contraption. We were all impressed. It also made it through a drop in a bag of cereal. The egg, however, did not fare well on the paper towels. He didn’t think the towels were thick enough!
🔎 It would be a great egg drop project idea to explore: how to drop an egg without breaking it using paper!
We concluded the egg drop challenge with a bag of flour mix. This was a very old gluten-free mix we will never use. The flour was “soft,” apparently protecting against the fall. Next time, we’ll open a bag of brownie mix, slide an egg in, seal it, and call it halfway to making brownies!
More Egg Science Activities
Prepare the eggs for more simple science projects to explore chemistry, biology, and physics!
- Do Eggs Float?
- Make A Bouncy Egg
- Test the strength of eggshells
- Get an egg into a bottle
- Egg Osmosis
More Favorite STEM Challenges
Straw Boats Challenge – Design a boat made from nothing but straws and tape, and see how many items it can hold before it sinks.
How Strong Is An Egg – Test much weight one egg can hold before it breaks.
Strong Spaghetti – Get out the pasta and test our your spaghetti bridge designs. Which one will hold the most weight?
Spaghetti Marshmallow Tower – Build the tallest spaghetti tower that can hold the weight of a jumbo marshmallow.
Strong Paper – Experiment with folding paper in different ways to test its strength, and learn about what shapes make the strongest structures.
Printable STEM Pack for Kids
80+ Doable Engineering Projects in one convenient pack!
- Full instructions with sample images
- Activity-specific instruction sheets
- Data Collection Sheets
- Questions for Reflection
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- Design a one-of-a-kind invention and write about it with this 5-page activity!
you worry too much about what people will think
do your experiments and be happy
who cares if you wasted a couple eggs.
it was good clean fun with your kids.
Did any of the bags burst open? I’m interesting in leading this for a library program and need to figure out where we should drop the bags.
There was no catastrophic bag opening. I would suggest making sure the air is out of the bag first. You could also drop it into a plastic bin. Also go with quality zip top bags if you are worried. Have fun with it!
coolreally handy