> SPICE Protocol · Mission Log 001
The Egg Drop
Challenge
Eggs are fragile. Drop one on the floor and it is over before you can blink. Our brief was simple and brutal: protect a boiled egg from a fall using only three sheets of cardstock, one arm-length of tape and our own bad ideas. This is the full engineering record, rebuilt as a site.
mission parameters
- Drop trials
- 3 + final
- Egg visibility
- ≥ 25%
- Materials
- kit only
- Build steps
- 4
- Governing law
- F = Δp / Δt
3×
Cardstock sheets issued
1 arm
Length of tape allowed
25%
Of the egg must stay visible
0
Cracks allowed in the shell
> methodology
The five-stage SPICE pipeline
SPICE is the design loop we ran the whole project through. Every stage has its own page, its own data and its own mistakes.
01 / S
Situation
The scenario, the team and the one goal that mattered: bring the egg home intact.
open stage →
02 / P
Problem
Four hard criteria and four hard limits — the fence every design had to fit inside.
open stage →
03 / I
Investigation
Why eggs break, five competing designs, four sketches and a live impact calculator.
open stage →
04 / C
Construction
The final rig: parachute, suspension tape, outer shell, egg seat. Plus the four-step build.
open stage →
05 / E
Evaluation
Trial drops, the criteria scorecard, what worked, what we would change — and a simulator.
open stage →
06 / OUT
Deliverable
One egg, zero cracks, built entirely from the issued kit and finished on schedule.
result → intact
> governing equation
F = Δp / Δt
Force equals the change in momentum divided by the time it takes to stop. The longer the egg takes to stop, the smaller the force on its shell.
Run the numbersslow the fall
Air resistance and a parachute cut the speed that the egg arrives with.
stretch the stop
Padding and crumple zones buy the milliseconds that make the impact survivable.
spread the force
A bigger contact area means less pressure on any single spot of the shell.
contain the payload
If the egg leaves the container, nothing else on this list matters.
> selected build
We went with Kunj's sketch
Four sketches, five concepts, one winner. Kunj's design stacked two ideas that protect the egg in different ways: a parachute that lowers the landing speed, and a cardstock case that takes over if the landing is still rough.
- Parachute canopySlows the fall before impact.
- Suspension tape linesHold the shell hanging level underneath.
- Outer cardstock shellTakes the first hit and crumples instead of the egg.
- Egg seatHolds the egg still and absorbs the shock.
final rig — schematic
- Primary objective
- zero cracks
- Backup objective
- shell survives first hit
- Materials used
- cardstock · tape
> operators
Two builders, one egg
Aayush and Kunj split the work between design and fabrication, then tested everything as a team. Four sketches came out of it, one of them flew.
operator 01
Aayush
Sketches 1–4, site build, physics write-up.
operator 02
Kunj
Winning sketch, fabrication, drop testing.
> end of log
Engineers protect fragile things by making impacts last longer.
That is the whole project in one sentence. Read how we found it, or jump straight to the trial-drop data.