Well is this a good idea for an egg drop......?

Well I am only 12 and in elementary and were doing this thing called an egg drop where you have to invent something that will save the egg from breaking/cracking when we drop it. My idea is A baby shoe with some thing soft inside and place the egg in the shoe and tied to it is a balloon that can't flow up but down.(the balloon is for the invention to flow down softly/slowly. Pleasse do not suggest new ideas just ideas to add to my "already thought of" experiment. PLEAASSE HELP!

Well is this a good idea for an egg drop......?
Sounds good to me.





The two things you're trying to do are control the rate of descent and the impact of the egg.





The helium filled balloon will slow the descent, and the padded baby shoe will cushion the egg.





Make sure you try it ahead of time. It will take a big helium balloon to slow the shoe/egg assembly.





I'd recommend one of those mylar balloons they sell at the grocery store. Those also don't leak anywhere near as fast as a latex balloon. If you fill a latex balloon the night before, it may be "dead" by the time school starts in the morning.
Reply:I know you said no new ideas but. . .I can't resist.





I'm thinking about whether you could use jello gelatin. Prepare the gelatin and pour half in a container, let it set. Place the egg in, pour the second half and let it set. The jello will both protect the egg, and when the container hits the ground, the egg will deaccellerate at a rate that will not break it (hopefully).





Maybe jello can be the cushion inside the shoe?
Reply:As suggested earlier the baby shoe padding would be insufficient. Would suggest bubble wrap as additional padding. Now you havent mentioned if the balloon is lighter than air (meaning filled with hydrogen/helium), if so add more balloons. If not try arranging several balloons in a protective shell manner and try to keep the show-bubblewrap-egg in the center of that arrangement. If the balloons dont burst, the egg should survive.
Reply:The baby shoe will give very minimal padding, and you can assess the lift power of the balloon by comparing, with your hands, the lift the balloon generates against the weight of the egg/shoe. Your typical mylar helium balloon is too small to do much, and adding more doesn't help much as the balloons themselves are relatively heavy. You would need a pretty big one.





Also maybe if you put the baby shoe inside a box about the size of a basketball with lots of padding.. but then the balloon will be even less effective.





Sorry but this idea is an egg-breaker.
Reply:Try and keep the weight of your cushioning device as low as possible and the size of your balloon(s) as big as you can. This will slow the impact down.





As with any design project, test it as soon as you can so that you can update your design. That way on the big day, you will know exactly what will happen.



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