The contest “was no joke,” said aeronautics student Nivya Durban, who came up with the idea for the competition:
“Techniques used to land a space vehicle on the moon were used here.”
Students used everything from Silly Putty to toilet paper, and Styrofoam cups packed with honey to plastic Coke bottles weighted down with water, to send their eggs to the ground.
One entrant used a children’s water flotation device pasted to a cardboard tray in an attempt to float the egg to the ground. Unfortunately, the tray landed upside down and the egg, although intact, failed to touch the ground.
The winner was Yair Solomon, who packed his raw egg in a jar of apricot jelly, placed it in a plastic tube and sealed it with a water balloon. He then shot it to the ground using a homemade rocket engine.
Solomon’s egg landed on the ground in just 3.2 seconds.