Eggshell Strength Experiment: How strong is an eggshell?

How strong is an eggshell? Eggs seem pretty fragile. Go ahead and drop one, it breaks pretty easily doesn’t it. Our favorite classic egg drop activity for young kids is a fun way to learn this. An eggshell is actually quite strong, but just how strong? Try this quick eggshell strength experiment to find out! Easter STEM ideas.

Egg Strength Experiment: How strong is an eggshell?

CRAZY STRONG EGGSHELLS MAKE A GREAT STEM EXPERIMENT

Now, I have always wanted to do that awesome looking walk on a dozen eggs experiment, but boy do I just see a mess waiting to happen. We will do it though because this quick and easy eggshell strength experiment showed us how strong these fragile eggs can be. We didn’t take the eggs to the point of breaking because I needed to use them, but we did see that they could hold a good amount of weight.

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I am sure you have dropped an egg to know just how quickly and easily they break open! The shells seem so fragile and delicate. How could they possible hold up a tower of books or 2 quarts of water!

SUPPLIES:

Eggs {3}

Plastic bottle caps {2 per egg}

Heavy items to place on top of eggs such as books, cans of food, bricks, etc

Cardboard

Water and container

EGGSHELL STRENGTH EXPERIMENT

We tried out a couple ways to to test out our eggshell strength experiment. We used books and we used water. We also tried out a single egg. Is your egg level. Just a little fun my son was having with the egg.

The bottle caps are for the eggs because eggs roll right? It would be challenging to stack items on top of the eggs if they were rolling away. Give each egg a bottle cap on the bottom and one on the top. What can one egg hold? Test the eggshell strength of just one egg before moving on to three.

Place three eggs in a triangle and make sure they have all their caps. Start stacking books. You can put a piece of cardboard underneath as a barrier just in case. We managed a huge stack of books including a bunch of heave hard cover books.

Why not make it into some sort of tower too? Add rope, a leprechaun pot, and an egg!

How about water? Continue your eggshell strength experiment with water. How much water can the three eggs hold. I used a piece of cardboard to keep the container level on the eggs. He filled it a little at a time with about 2 quarts of water. He was astonished.

Why are my eggs so strong? Do they have super powers. Not really, but they do have the power of the dome shape. This unique shape distributes any weight applied to the top of it to the entire egg. Have you ever seen a building in the shape of a dome? The entire structure supports the weight of the roof. The egg’s dome does the same.

Now at some point these eggs will crack. Maybe you will find their breaking point.