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The pursuit of ‘egg’cellence |
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Monday, 18 February 2008 |
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 Shoshana Brackett/SDN Overstreet Elementary PEAK students watch in anticipation as their car carrying a raw egg races down the track to an impact at the bottom. The students designed the car to protect the egg during impact, much like a seat belt protects people in a car crash. Pictured from left to right are Rosemary Cuicchi, K-12 outreach coordinator for the Mission Eggcellence Challenge and a retired teacher, and Overstreet PEAK students Jalan Starks, Bryton Heiselt and Anthony Atkison. Students study vehicular safety by design through MSU competition By SHOSHANA BRACKETT
Starkville Daily News
What do car passengers and raw eggs have in common? A lot when it came to Saturday’s Mission Eggcellence Challenge.
Mission Eggcellence, started in 2004 by Mark Horstemeyer and Donald Trotter at the Center for Advanced Vehicular Design, aims to give students practical experience with math and physics through applications in preventing passenger injury in car crashes.
Saturday at the Bost Extension Center on the Mississippi State University campus, kindergarten through sixth grade students competed to see who had the most protective car design for their passengers — raw eggs.
Students tested their cars by letting the cars roll down an incline track to an impact at the bottom. The incline increased as the competition progressed.
In one competition, students focused on providing protective bumpers to reduce the impact forces on the passenger for the bumper competition (Mission Eggcellence). In a separate competition (Automotive Challenge), students designed passenger restraint systems for their cars made from K’nex construction sets, imitating the seat belts used in regular cars.
“We separated the bumper construction from the passenger compartment construction/ restraint system construction to address the different forces acting on the egg and the car because upon impact they become two different projectiles,” said Rosemary Cuicchi, Mission Eggcellence Challenge K-12 outreach coordinator and retired teacher.
Mission Eggcellence begins with teachers attending workshops to learn about the math and science behind the projects, with the most recent teacher workshops held in January.
Teachers take what they learn back to the classroom where their students learn about math and physics while designing and testing their own cars.
Teachers receive a teacher notebook with eight custom-designed, grade-appropriate experiments to demonstrate the math and physics associated with car crashes such as speed, velocity, acceleration, force, conservation of momentum, impulse and mechanical energy, with all experiments correlated to the Mississippi math and science standards.
Teachers also receive the materials necessary to conduct the experiments for up to 30 students funded through a Department of Education grant.
The material kit includes a Newton’s cradle, a massive car, a ramp, 15 bumpers, 15 K’nex kits or 15 balsa wood its, a digital scale and more.
Saturday, the student winners from each school gathered at MSU to compete with other students from the area counties — Oktibbeha, Choctaw, Clay, Lowndes, Noxubee, Webster and Winston. The competition is open to public, private and home school students.
This year’s competition saw a large turnout of about 110 students and 24 teachers, Cuicchi said.
By the time they reached the competitions Saturday, students had already learned the physics and math behind car crashes and were simply seeing which car could best protect its passenger.
“We learned what impulse means, that there’s many types of energy and tons of other stuff said James Travis, an Overstreet PEAK student.
Travis said his team also broke many eggs while experimenting with their cars.
The student designs also did a good job Saturday of protecting the eggs as the cars rolled down the inclined track.
“The students had a ball,” Cuicchi said. “We were almost vertical to break the eggs. It finally came down to the lightest mass.”
“They were all just so excited,” she said. “It was amazing.”
This coming Saturday, students in seventh through twelfth grade will compete with cars and passenger restraint systems made from balsa wood.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 19 February 2008 )
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