Take the egg drop challenge for an awesome STEM project for young kids and older ones too! Your imagination is the limit with these cleverly styled egg drop designs as you investigate what makes for the best shock absorber for dropping an egg. Read on to find out how the egg drop challenge works and what are the best materials for an egg drop. We have tons more STEM activities for you to try!
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.
What else can you do with eggs? Watch the video!
Grab the FREE Printable Egg Drop Worksheets!
What are the Best Materials for an Egg Drop?
We have two versions of this egg drop challenge below, one for older kids 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 kiddos will love coming up with ideas to protect the egg in an egg drop. Certainly, 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 ziptop bags to contain the mess! How many is up to you. We had 7 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 10 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.
Make It An Egg Drop Experiment
Want to turn this fun science activity into a science fair project? Then, you will want to check out these helpful resources.
Here are some ideas to remember to change the variables for an egg drop science fair project.
Standard Egg Drop: Start with the classic challenge where students must design a contraption to protect a raw egg from breaking when dropped from a certain height. They can experiment with different materials and shapes for their protective devices.
Materials Investigation: Have students investigate the properties of different materials. Ask them 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.
Add These STEM Questions for Reflection
These STEM questions for reflection are perfect to use with older kiddos to talk about how the project went and what they might do differently next time around. Use these questions for reflection with your kids after they have completed the STEM challenge to encourage discussion of results and critical thinking.
—> Get the printable STEM questions list here.
- What were some of the challenges you discovered along the way?
- What worked well and what did not work well?
- What part of your model or prototype do you really like? Explain why.
- What part of your model or prototype needs improvement? Explain why.
- What other materials would you like to use if you could do this challenge again?
- What would you do differently next time?
- What parts of your model or prototype are similar to the real world version?
Check Our Our 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 fair 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 in 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 very old gluten-free mix we will never use}. The flour was “soft” apparently making for great protection against the fall.
More Egg Science Activities
Get the eggs ready for more simple science projects to explore chemistry, biology, and physics!
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?
Paper Bridges – Similar to our strong spaghettti challenge. Design a paper bridge with folded paper. Which one will hold the most coins?
Paper Chain STEM Challenge – One of the simplest STEM challenges ever!
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.
Marshmallow Toothpick Tower – Build the tallest tower using only marshmallows and toothpicks.
Penny Boat Challenge – Design a simple tin foil boat, and see how many pennies it can hold before it sinks.
Gumdrop Bridge – Build a bridge from gumdrops and toothpicks and see how much weight it can hold.
Cup Tower Challenge – Make the tallest tower you can with 100 paper cups.
Paper Clip Challenge – Grab a bunch of paper clips and make a chain. Are paper clips strong enough to hold weight?
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
- Architecture Building Cards: Try the tallest tower challenge
- Bridge Building Cards: Explore different types of bridges to build your own.
- Paper Chain STEM Challenge: Who can make the longest chain? Great icebreaker or quick challenge!
- 3 Little Pigs Architectural Pack: Design a house that won’t blow away!
- Great marshmallow challenge: A classic challenge kids love!
- Real-world STEM challenge lesson but don’t know where to start? Our easy-to-follow template shows the steps!
- What’s the difference between a scientist and an engineer?
- Crossword and word search with engineering vocabulary.
- Engineering vocabulary cards
- 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