Ryan lely/Sonoma Valley Sun
Originating at a height of 75 feet, the egg drop is a memorable part of the yearly “Physics Olympics,” that is held at the high school.
Students at Sonoma Valley High School learned last week that there’s more than one way to scramble an egg. About 80 chicken eggs, shrouded in an assortment of student-made protective devices, were dropped from a 75-foot ladder affixed to a fire truck as part of the school’s popular “Physics Olympics” curricula. The spectacle was not a spin on “egg drop soup” so much as a way to explore the notion of “impulse,” according to instructor Dean Knight, who oversaw the well-attended event.
“Students accomplish doing this in various ways,” said Knight, as a homemade egg shuttle plummeted to the blacktop. “We’ve seen a motley assortment of various mechanisms.”
Merely peering at the firefighter perched on the ladder looming above the schoolyard was enough to cause vertigo. The students didn’t mind, however, as they squinted into the sun awaiting the moment their creations were to crash to the ground.
“Though we may not use the term exactly, it deals with ‘impulse.’ The container has a certain amount of momentum when it hits, and you want to lessen the force to the egg,” explained Knight, as yet another egg added to growing puddle of yolk below.
“It’s great. The kids love it, and they’re really excited about it. It gets them thinking creatively, which is a wonderful thing,” said instructor Jacqueline Levy, who was witnessing the egg-drop for the first time.
“They’re learning about construction and certain principles of physics. They get to evaluate how they did afterward – what designs worked and what didn’t, how one weighs speeds versus the mass of the object. There are various factors that they get measured on,” she added. “They have to decide which things they’re going to err towards to make them work. Some make them bigger, though they may lose a few points there, but they may survive more than if they went for small and fast.”
Levy was pleased to see that members of the community embraced the lesson as much as the students.
“It’s great that the fire department is here and that the community gets involved,” she said.
