The important thing to a profitable egg drop experiment? Drop it on its facet

There was a key distinction, nevertheless, between how vertically and horizontally  squeezed eggs deformed within the compression experiments—particularly, the previous deformed lower than the latter. The shell’s larger rigidity alongside its lengthy axis was a bonus as a result of the heavy load was distributed over the floor. (It is why the one-handed egg-cracking approach targets the middle of a horizontally held egg.)

However the authors discovered that this benefit when beneath static compression proved to be an obstacle when dropping eggs from a top, with the horizontal place rising because the optimum orientation.  It comes all the way down to the distinction between stiffness—how a lot power is required to deform the egg—and toughness, i.e., how a lot power the egg can soak up earlier than it cracks.

Cohen et al.’s experiments confirmed that eggs are harder when loaded horizontally alongside their equator, and stiffer when compressed vertically, suggesting that “an egg dropped on its equator can possible maintain larger drop heights with out cracking,” they wrote. “Even when eggs may maintain the next power when loaded within the vertical route, it doesn’t essentially suggest that they’re much less more likely to break when dropped in that orientation. In distinction to static loading, to stay intact following a dynamic affect, a physique should be capable to soak up all of its kinetic power by transferring it into reversible deformation.”

“Eggs have to be powerful, not stiff, with a view to survive a fall,” Cohen et al. concluded, pointing to our intuitive understanding that we should always bend our knees relatively than lock them right into a straightened place when touchdown after a leap, for instance. “Our outcomes and evaluation function a cautionary story about how language can have an effect on our understanding of a system, and improper framing of an issue can result in misunderstanding and miseducation.”

DOI: Communications Physics, 2025. 10.1038/s42005-025-02087-0  (About DOIs).