A seventh-grader strolled away with the top prize at Thursday’s Egg Drop at Walla Walla University.
by MARTIN SURRIDGE for the Walla Walla Union Bulletin and The Collegian
University students and staff joined middle school students and community members on Thursday morning on the Kretschmar Hall lawn at Walla Walla University for the school’s 30th Annual Egg Drop. The friendly competition—in which contestants design, construct, and throw an egg-protecting device from the roof of Kretschmar Hall as close as they can get to a frying pan on the concrete path 37 feet below—is a sponsored by the WWU chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
The Egg Drop has been a popular event in College Place for several decades. Chaplain Paddy McCoy, who hosted the extracurricular event, commented on the history of the tradition and said to the students in the audience that when the first Egg Drop was held thirty years ago, “parachute pants were cool and you were all some distant hope in your parents’ minds.”
Contestants of all grades and majors and as young as 3rd grade competed on their own, or more frequently in groups with names like “Molecule of Doom,” “I Can’t Believe its Not Egg Salad,” and “Engineers Without Lives.” Egg-protecting devices that were tossed off the roof included a Valentine’s Day teddy bear, a loaf of bread, and a foam football in a wire cage, known as the “Cage of Rage,” which successfully prevented the grade-A chicken egg from breaking. The contraption was designed and created by a group of WWU students, including sophomore computer engineering major, Bryson Bechtel.
Bechtel explained just how the unusual design worked and what it did to protect the egg, “We used a lot of padding,” he said, “Our cage acted as a big spring and the football inside was padded too, and then of course there’s the air resistance.”
Bechtel also explained that the competition brings the community together in a unique way, “It provides an opportunity for the kids and the college students to be on the same playing field.”
One of the largest group of younger students were from Sager Middle School. Ted Knauft, who teaches 7th and 8th grade at Sager, brought his class on a short field trip to the WWU campus as a part of a concerted effort to broaden students’ experience and interactions within the community.
“Part of [the Egg Drop] is the experience of being off campus and being part of your community,” Knauft said, “and a chance to interact in a different venue.”
The students from Sager did very well, often outperforming and protecting more eggs than their collegiate counterparts. One seventh grade boy finished first place and walked away with a certificate and a cash prize after beating dozens of engineering majors in their late teens and early twenties.
However, the engineers and other university students lost graciously and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the event. David Colls, a mechanical engineering major, shared what he thought was the best part of the event.
“It was probably watching the different designs and seeing how clever the contestants are. It makes learning and science fun.”
