Breaking Falls, Not Eggs: The Ultimate Engineering Challenge, by Bhavneet Bhatia

The Dalhousie Mechanical Engineering Society brought out the best in engineering creativity with the Egg Drop Competition, a highlight of Eng Week 2025. The event was held at the Makerspace, where a room full of innovative, competition-driven engineers came together to design, build, and test contraptions to protect their fragile cargo—an egg—from a high-altitude fall.

With supplies like straws, cups, thread, popsicle sticks, garbage bags, and more, participants crafted a variety of unique designs, each with its own strategy for success. Some teams opted for parachutes, slowing down the descent for a gentle landing, while others engineered impact-absorbing systems, including an inflated hand glove at the bottom of the cup, mimicking an airbag in a car.

The competition put both the designs and the resilience of the eggs to the test. In the first round, teams dropped their eggs from the second floor of the Idea Building. To move forward, their designs had to keep the eggs intact upon landing, with verification conducted on-site. Those who succeeded advanced to the next round, where the challenge became even more demanding. This time, the eggs were dropped from the third floor, and simply surviving the fall was not enough. The final winner was determined based on which egg landed closest to a marked cross on the ground floor.

With precision and engineering excellence, the winning team not only saved their egg but also landed closest to the target, earning themselves a Visa gift card—and, of course, the ultimate prize of bragging rights.

The competition was a testament to engineering ingenuity, problem-solving, and the thrill of creative design, proving once again that Dalhousie’s mechanical engineers are always ready to tackle a challenge head-on.