Engineering an egg drop

Eighty-five women from high schools throughout Idaho and Washington traveled to the University of Idaho to take a crack at dropping eggs from the second story of the UI Commons without breaking them.

It was all part of the UI's 24th annual Women in Engineering Day - an event that pulls high school seniors and juniors interested in engineering to the UI and tasks them with an engineering project.

Friday that project was to create a structure that could be dropped two stories and still protect its payload - in this case an egg.

"It's a statistic there are less women in engineering than men," said UI engineering student Tori Oberholtzer, who also serves as vice-president of the Society of Women Engineers at the UI. "(This event is) to show they have a support network in those skills."

The 85 young women - 65 from Idaho and 20 from Washington - were divided into 16 teams and were allotted two and-a-half hours to construct a unit to support the egg.

May Quiang, a junior at Pullman High School, said her group - Eggcelent Engineering - used popsicle sticks, masking tape, rubber bands and a Ziploc bag to protect their egg from a fight with the floor. The Ziploc bag, used as a parachute, slowed the fall, but not quite enough.

"Bartholomew died," Quiang said. "Originally we named it Jeff, but another team named their egg Jeff."

The groups were scored based on teamwork, creativity, a verbal presentation of their ideas and, of course, how the egg held up.

"Yeah, that one's dead," Jessie Schweitzer, a high school senior from East Wenatchee, said as she watched another group's egg come crashing to the ground.

Schweitzer's egg was protected by a frame of wire and popsicle sticks. The egg was suspended in a paper cup padded with paper.

The egg appeared to have survived impact, but when members of the group worked to get the egg out of the small paper cup, the egg cracked.

Schweitzer said the egg may have been cracked before, but not to the extent it was after a finger indented it.

Schweitzer said she heard about the event at Envision Idaho Day at the university.

"STEM are the fields I enjoy," she said. "I like the creative aspects instead of doing the same thing everyday."

She said she's torn right now, but she will be attending the UI or Washington State University next fall.

Schweitzer's teammate Nat Pollard, a Moscow High School junior, said if she could go back, she would have put a parachute on the egg to slow the fall. The group was the only one to not use one.

Like most who were asked, Pollard said she will be attending the UI after high school.

Holly Broughton, a senior from Mead High School and part of the Eggsome Women team, said she enjoyed seeing the UI campus. Broughton said she is also considering UI as an option for higher education.

The event was organized by Bethany Kersten, a sophomore chemical engineering student and former MHS grad. Kersten said she spun the project off of a balloon launch grant project with NASA she is currently working on.

Kersten said she participated in the event when she was in high school. She said at that time the project was constructing a bridge during a zombie apocalypse.

"It definitely influenced my choosing to go here," Kersten said. "Going to that event was fun - it's about learning what engineering is and being with young women students who are all interested in the same things."

Josh Babcock can be reached at (208) 883-4630, or by email to jbabcock@dnews.com.