In a naked egg drop, students design a container to safely catch an unprotected egg. Students can make their containers from a variety of materials including pillows, cotton balls, popsicle sticks, masking tape or paper. Depending on the abilities of your students, you can give each group a preselected set of materials or have them gather their own supplies from a larger pool of options. Give each group the same amount of time to build their structure; about 15 to 30 minutes is fair for fifth graders.
The objective of a bungee egg drop is to design a bungee system that allows an unprotected egg to drop from a height of 3 feet into a large bowl filled with 2 inches of water without breaking. Students can use an unlimited number of rubber bands to create their bungee. This activity is more challenging than the naked egg drop because students need to estimate how many rubber bands they need to use. The egg must touch the water in the bowl but not crack.
In a protected egg drop, the goal is to build a container that will protect an egg dropped from a given height. Students can wrap their egg in materials like bubble wrap, plastic straws, newspaper or pillowcases. Like the naked egg drop, you can either give students preselected materials or have them gather their own. As in any egg drop, an egg that is not cracked or broken after the drop is a success.
You can vary the parameters of your egg drop based on the level of your students and what you want them to learn from the activity. The bungee egg drop is the most difficult and the protected egg drop is the easiest. To make any egg drop more difficult, increase the height of the drop and use a more limited pool of materials. To make an egg drop easier, provide a wider range of materials, increased work time, or a shorter drop.