Week 2: Egg Drop Test - Reflection

   On our second lesson, we were taught about the concept of breaking the rules, not in terms of doing something illegal, but to do something others won't typically do.

   During the lesson, we were given only 10 minutes to design an aesthetically pleasing packaging to protect an egg from a 3 meter drop. We were told to prepare a few materials the previous week for this experiment, the materials are as follows:
- Egg
- Cups
- Thread
- Straws
- Glue
- Tissue paper

   Given that we only had 10 minutes to make our "egg protector", I immediately came up with an idea to encase the egg in a larger cup with cut off bottoms of smaller cups in the larger cup to make a makeshift egg carton. Sadly, this idea was put down as our lecturer told us that we could only use a single cup.

   We had to change our course of action. In that moment, I recalled the packaging of the Malay rice cake "Ketupat". This unique packaging weaves banana leaves to form this case which wraps the rice cakes for easy transportation and consumption while protecting it.

reference: https://leeweebrothers.com/our-food/satay/ketupat/

     With this in my mind, I voiced out my idea to my teammates to use the "Ketupat" packaging as an inspiration for our egg drop test by using straws to act as a shock absorbent and to weave it into a case to incase the egg in. When my teammates agreed with the idea, I was elated and we began forming our weave. I was pleased that 3 of my teammates contributed by helping out one another in forming the weave as it was really hard to form. However, I was also frustrated in the beginning as the straws kept going out of position and made it difficult to make the weave. Fortunately, my teammates held on to the straws tightly so that we could complete the weave. 

After the completion of the straw weave, we encased the egg in it.

To secure the egg into place, we then used some thread to seal up the packaging, preventing the egg from slipping out.

Furthermore, we placed the packaging into a styrofoam cup to act as an additional shock absorbent and sealed off the top of the cup with scotch tape to prevent the egg from slipping out. We also added a pretty ribbon on the cup which I thought was cute. I was contented that our design looked good and was confident that our egg would survive the drop.

 

   Now for the moment that we've been waiting for, the drop test! When it was our group's turn to drop our egg, I felt anxious yet I was also excited and anticipated for the result of our hard work. The moment my teammate let go of the egg and it landed on the ground without a smash, my heart was beating again and i was relieved and overjoyed that it survived the test and did not break.

Although our egg survived the test, our ribbon did not.

Reflection:

   This was a fun and new experience for me as I have never conducted this test before. It forces us to think on our feet, think out of the box, act fast and to only use what we have in the moment. I am also glad that our lecturer put us in a spot by limiting the materials allowed to be used in this experiment (only being able to use 1 cup) as we would not have come up with such an innovative and aesthetically pleasing design for this experiment.