Those egg drop engineering contests... Experiences?

[Old Dominion Heather]

My son wants to do one in March and he will be in the youngest age group at the Virginia Air and Space Center drop in March. Has anyone been to one of these? I am just curious to know how competitive the whole contest is so I can prepare him for that. He tends to be somewhat competitive himself, so that is not necessarily a problem.

Are these things actually fun, or a total drag?

Thank you!

[Julie in CA]

We've participated in egg-drop events a couple of times. We found it to be really fun, but I'm sure the atmosphere can change according to the group dynamics/competition. We did it as part of a homeschool charter school, and the kids were all very good natured. Make sure to bring your camera, and have your dc take notes about what worked/didn't work in case you get to participate again. When you get home, it's kind of fun to try and figure out what went wrong with certain "packages" and what went right with others. We've had intact eggs, and we've had broken eggs--I can never remember which techniques produced the best-protected eggs, but my kids sure can!
Have fun,
Julie

[Blue Hen]

My kids have done egg-drop competitions as part of Science Olympiad (http://soinc.org/). Just read the rules online for your competition and my suggestion is; practice. There are several online sites that give suggestions on how to build the package to keep the egg intact. With our kids we worked on getting them to think of how they could decrease the weight of carrier since the lightest package would win. They had more fun practicing and coming up with new and better carriers then they did in the actual competition.

Science is FUN!!