Rotor Egg Drop B

[JMDugan]

Thank you for your reply about the knex. I agree that there is no way to know how a supervisor will rule or judge. She thought the hub was an actual knex kit, not just pieces put together from knex -- my kid is a 6 foot five inch tall 7th grader and is pretty noncommunicative -- when i asked him if he had built from a kit, he didn't know -- i get the impression he has thousand os knex gotten over the years and truly didn't know - we weren't going to convince the event supervisor anyway.

I personally think it's too heavy and he should move to all balsa -- but hey -- if he wants his 4 foot 11 inch 6th grade female partner to beat him in a showdown - that's his choice.

[Brian Lu]

For the Rotor Egg Drop Event, my group is using a tennis ball to substitute as an egg. Is this a good substitute for the egg? And if not, what would be a good substitute?

[Skink]

For the Rotor Egg Drop Event, my group is using a tennis ball to substitute as an egg. Is this a good substitute for the egg? And if not, what would be a good substitute?

Egg Beaters

[Claudia Lee]

For the helicopter egg drop device, how can we get more surface area on the device without adding too much unnecessary weight?

[Ethan Son]

What would be an ideal shape of the propellors?

[Eric Bao]

My team and I have made our rotors, the wings, but we are unable to think of a solution in which we can attach them onto an egg. We tried gluing wood together and attaching the rotors to the wood but it seemed not to work. Please assist my group

[ninetyfools]

Hrm, are we allowed to spin the rotor before dropping it?
RIVENOPMANNN

[JustDroobles]

For the Rotor Egg Drop Event, my group is using a tennis ball to substitute as an egg. Is this a good substitute for the egg? And if not, what would be a good substitute?

A plastic Easter egg. You can put stuff inside of it to get it up to the weight of a real egg.

Hrm, are we allowed to spin the rotor before dropping it?
RIVENOPMANNN

No. http://soinc.org/node/1082

[lindseyma]

I was wondering if the amount of rotors you use has any effect on how long the device stays up in the air. My team is using three, and I'm not sure if this is a good number of rotors, or if we need to use four.

[jander14indoor]

For the Rotor Egg Drop Event, my group is using a tennis ball to substitute as an egg. Is this a good substitute for the egg? And if not, what would be a good substitute?

Anything that weighs what an average egg does will work to start. Does the tennis ball do that? Put it in the cup specified in the rules and practice attaching said cup to your device, again per rules. Can you do that with a tennis ball? And, before competition try a few real eggs. Nothing like the real thing.

In short, test like you are going to compete. Finish with a few real tests with a real egg.

For the helicopter egg drop device, how can we get more surface area on the device without adding too much unnecessary weight?

IF you are building as light as possible its hard. But, if you are building as light as possible, the device should weight far less than the egg. If you double the area, you may double the device weight, but NOT the total system weight and still come out ahead. Only experimentation will tell you if it is worth it. In addition, if you are at minimum weight with say two rotor blades, each blade is carrying half the system weight. If you go to four blades, each carries only 1/4th the system weight, you should be able to build lighter rotors so you don't double the device weight. Again, it may be worth it, only testing will tell.