The Egg Drop at Ignite Austin during SXSW

The Egg Drop at Ignite Austin during SXSW

This year at South by Southwest, I attended the Ignite Austin event, with the whole Morpheus Media crew. Ignite is a get together that features fast paced 5 minute mini lectures. Each presenter gets 5 minutes, and 20 slides, which auto advance. Presenters can, and do, talk about anything they want, and the crazy fast pace often leads to some very interesting presentations. Ignite parties are held all over the country, including Austin and NYC. Also at Ignite, there’s the tradition of doing an egg drop. For Ignite during SXSW in Austin, I decided to give it a try.

We were given 1 egg, 5 sheets of paper, 3 feet of masking tape, and 10 minutes to make a container that would protect an egg from a 1 story fall. I believe my idea was sound, but had a few construction issues which prevented it from working. Next time, I would have used a parachute design for the drogue, rather than pom pom design. I think if we had taken more care in efficiently constructing it, we could have had the necessary materials to construct a parachute from an entire piece of paper.