Hillside Elementary hosts egg drop

• Soft landing

Nate Kirkman, left, and Bill Knutson tossed “egg landing devices” off the roof of Hillside Elementary on March 30 as an experiment for the fourth-graders. Students were challenged with making a landing device that kept a raw egg from breaking on impact.
• Egg toss

Nate Kirkman, right, tosses a box from the roof of Hillside Elementary’s gymnasium. Inside the box, baby clothes work to keep a raw egg from breaking on impact.

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Shrieks and giggles exploded from the Hillside Elementary campus on March 30 as eggs were tossed from the roof of the gymnasium.

The first “egg drop” took place on Friday and students could not have been more thrilled.

The egg drop was the first of many planned at the school, said Bryan Hop, fourth grade teacher.

The object of the optional competition was to keep a raw egg safe, even as they were dropped from the roof of the school’s gymnasium. Students were able to craft their own “egg landing device” but were unable to use glue, paint, tape or polish. Bubble wrap and store-bought foam and packaging material were also forbidden.

Containers ranged from two liter bottles stuffed with cotton balls to a box filled with baby clothes. The only size requirement students had to follow was that their “container” had to fit through a one square foot hole.

Most of the containers fashioned with some sort of parachute completed the task. Another device, filled with baggies of Rice Krispies, also passed the egg drop test.

Nate Kirkman, guidance counselor at Hillside Elementary, was tasked with dropping the eggs. Sporting a vintage aviator helmet, goggles and a megaphone, Kirkman took his job seriously, prompting students to scream “3-2-1-Drop!” before each egg drop.

On the ground, teachers Hop and Tracy Preece operated as ground judges, determining which eggs survived the fall and helping to dispose of those that didn’t. Roughly half the eggs survived.

Tags: new richmond schools, education