Yolk's on you – eggs break less when they land sideways It might sound like common sense – and it's echoed by science communicators and even ChatGPT – but it's wrong. New research shows eggs are less likely to crack when they land on their side than on their end. According to research published in Communications Physics, a trial simulating the classroom science experiment found …
"There were school kids throwing eggs out of second storey windows onto grass and they bounced! I did it in the back garden and it worked."
Many, many years ago I was sent on a graduate training course in the Lake District. One of the "bonding" session included the challenge of getting an egg from the second floor to the ground unbroken, and with three eggs and a few sheets of paper. Cue much group arsing around with attempted parachutes (failed), catching devices (failed). With the final egg, the group continued to argue about how a couple of remaining sheets of paper would help, so I did the logical thing, ignored the fuckwits, and indeed the egg survived. But according to the dweebs overseeing the course, this was a failure because we hadn't worked as a group. I've never liked "process people" since.
The air bubble has nothing to do with it. The reason is the impact force is more concentrated on the tips than the side. The pointy end has maybe a 2 square mm impact zone while the side will have a 5-6 square mm impact zone. Spread a set amount of force across a larger area, and the structure can take a more forceful impact without damage.
That's not what the study says though. It's not about contact patch. It's the reduced stiffness of the side that distributes force across a wider area thus is able to store more energy in an elastic deformation. Increased contact patch size is itself a function of stiffness, just like maximum drop height without cracking is.
Did they try with boiled eggs? I have only seen it done with raw ones. The fact that most of the mass is fluid and there is an air sack is probably essential, as it allows the internal movement to absorb the energy gradually.
Probably need someone with a degree in viscous fluid dynamics to explain it properly, though.
Oh, expect more of that research to come to the UK. After all, Starmer signed up to buy Boeings so the threat of more study material looms (assuming anyone wants to get in one - I reckon it'll be mainly Ryanair passengers).
I hope he delays ordering them until the orange idiot has finally vacated the wreckage because we all know how wonderfully well Boeing is audited. I reckon it's about the same as the ratings agencies kept an eye on Wall Street when they were selling CDOs..
Egg-drop experiments have been a staple of engineering design courses for the best part of 100 years. This research speaks directly to every engineer that has ever participated in, or watched, or read about egg-drop exercises, and to every student doing the egg-drop design exercise, now or in the future.
People get too caught up in the specifics of papers like these, and they also don't read it properly.
Every proper research paper includes a justification for existing, in this case they didn't pretend their findings revolutionized the field of egg-based physics, but they rather explained the importance of communication, specific wording, and not relying on word-of-mouth or common sense rather than quantifiable data!
It's also important to lay the foundation for future research. With this "silly" paper in hand, you can apply for grants to repeat this research with different materials at a larger scale, or to propose new naming conventions to take away the confusion that exists now.
It also says to everyone to ignore your preconceptions when doing science and however surprising the result - belief the experiment. As Richard Feynman once said (albeit about something a bit different), "reality must take precedence [], for Nature cannot be fooled".
I am thrilled to learn that Science has so much time on its hands to tackle the really important problems that have plagued cooks since time immemorial.
Now all we need is a procedure to ensure that dropped eggs always land on their sides.
Maybe a dash of butter might help ?
Me too! It's a perfect addition to prior gastronomic guidance relative to the perfect 32-italian-minutes soft boiled egg!
(not to mention "new" frozen pre-omeletted Happy eggs, for the less adventurous experimentalists ... they hardly ever break!)
The research article contains the, for me, important detail missing in the reg article: A crack is already enough damage to be seen as "broken", even is the egg itself stays intact after the crack, i.e. no liquid contents spilling. And they show details about the egg-mounting.
There were already a few egg themed Ig Nobel awards
2015 Chemistry: Researchers from UC Irvine and Australia, Callum Ormonde and Colin Raston, and Tom Yuan, Stephan Kudlacek, Sameeran Kunche, Joshua N. Smith, William A. Brown, Kaitlin Pugliese, Tivoli Olsen, Mariam Iftikhar, Gregory Weiss, for inventing a chemical recipe to partially un-boil an egg
1993 Consumer Engineering: Presented to Ron Popeil, incessant inventor and perpetual pitchman of late night television, for the Inside-the-Shell Egg Scrambler.
1993 Physics: Presented to Corentin Louis Kervran of France, for his conclusion that the calcium in chickens' eggshells is created by a process of cold fusion.
Clearly 1993 was a vintage year for nutters.
The drop height was measured according to fig. 2(b) from the bottom of the shell to the impacted surface rather than from the egg's centre of mass.
The CoM to surface distance minus the distance from the CoM to the shell surface vertically below will determine the maximum velocity just before impact.
So the an egg dropped pointy end first would potentially drop further but impact slightly earlier than one dropped lying on its side.
The paper's authors have referenced Dean Swift's seminal work on taxonomy of egg morphology but have seen fit to ignore his universal if not uncontroversial nomenclature big endian and little endian for blunt end and sharp end† respectively.
† only generations raised with plastic scissors etc could imagine any aspect of an egg as being sharp.
I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. The impact velocity is only dependent on the distance that the egg can drop, ie from the lowest point of the shell to the impact surface (h). Acceleration due to gravity is independent of mass and mass distribution.
From basic physics, and as per the paper, the impact velocity can be calculated as sqrt(2gh).
Assumptions: air resistance is disregarded and the egg is non-rotating when released.
Yeah, and one may wonder how shell deformation affects all this too ... For one thing, the mp4 that they have in supplementary mat'ls suggests that if the egg bounces it doesn't crack (irrespective of side). Plus that vid ends with a cool 10cm drop (approx.) which is slightly more fun, yet not fully explosive.
This being said, their 3D Abaqus/Explicit FEM with S4R-element elastodynamic eggshell interacting with EC3D8R-element viscous-fluid yolk, in Coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian fashion, is right swell imho (Δxyz ≈ 2mm, Δt ≈ 0.005s, results in Fig. 3). And in view of DARPA's Shafto, one might ponder whether some sort of Sánchez-Cockburn Symplectic Hamiltonian FEM could be beneficial here (or not?). Inquiring minds ...
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The paper's authors have referenced Dean Swift's seminal work on taxonomy of egg morphology but have seen fit to ignore his universal if not uncontroversial nomenclature big endian and little endian for blunt end and sharp end† respectively.
And here's me thinking it was Jonathan Swift. I wonder if they were related?
The drop height was measured according to fig. 2(b) from the bottom of the shell to the impacted surface rather than from the egg's centre of mass.The CoM to surface distance minus the distance from the CoM to the shell surface vertically below will determine the maximum velocity just before impact.
I must be missing something, because it seems to me that "The CoM to surface distance minus the distance from the CoM to the shell surface vertically below" is just a more verbose and less intuitive way of saying "from the bottom of the shell to the impacted surface".
Yeah, but during the critical post-impact timeframe (short), the CoM keeps moving down while the eggshell's bottom surface is stationary. The shock's energy is proportional to that differential in position and represented internally by increased pressure. If that pressure (energy) is too large, the egg cracks, otherwise it bounces back up (the energy is restored near elastically) ... (I guess)
"...bottom of the shell to the impacted surface rather than from the egg's centre of mass.
The CoM to surface distance minus the distance from the CoM to the shell surface vertically below..."
Aren't those both the same thing? In the second case you are including the CoM to shell distance, then subtracting it, to get the same as the first case.
Most insightful research indeed! It should prove particularly useful in helping us all accurately plan as to which way to specifically store egg crates the next time that imminent dynamic impact from a 50-year old Soviet era 1,000-lb 3-ft wide Venusian commercial glass polisher piece of space junk decides to apocalyptically ramshackle its way straight into Earth's surface at 150 mph!
This here Venera mission's Kosmos 482 Descent Craft missed my egg collection this morning ... but it sure was just that close!
Sure ... but even a hairline microcrack eggshell fracture is sufficient to harbor salmonella, plus they grow over time (eg. on grocery store shelves) ...
Hairline fracture is only a problem when the egg lost its natural protection. In EU, and most of the other world, the eggs are not strongly scrubbed with chlorine, just soft treatment with a brush to get superficial dirt off. And they stay fresh for days without cooling.
In USA, which I just guess you may be from, the eggs are treated in a way to kill the natural protection. Result: You NEED to keep them in the fridge, and hairline fractures are more an issue.
Great point! My eyeballs nearly exploded diagonally when I found eggs not-refrigerated on European store shelves. This Forbes piece gives a very nice comparison of this egg stuff for America (North) and Europe (much as you've written) ... well worth a gander (cuticle, moisture, cleaning, washing, sanitization, refrigeration, oiling, vaccination, ...).
Using a standardised hens arse hight drop we proved that Chat GPT is not yet smarter than a bird.
Though no thought was given to the dietary variations that can affect shell fracture rates or egg processing variations according to local custom we see this work as definitive until the next one is published in ten minutes.
When I used to go to parties and get drunk, my party piece was to demonstrate that I could throw an egg over a house and it would remain unbroken--which it most always did unless it hit concrete or a brick or the chimney. Of course, this was 60 years ago when eggs were eggs and my arm was my arm. And houses were quaint Single Family Dwellings. Off you all go and have a try!
Did it mention whether they were US eggs used?
I would assume the comparatively harsh treatments involved in commercial US egg processing would make the eggs more likely to crack.
I would be interested in comparison of commercial egg fragility vs. small scale egg production.
I live in a rural area, lost of people keep a few chickens & will occasionally have some surplus eggs for sale (technically illegal in UK, but local sellers & purchasers all happy with turning a blind eye as both benefit)
In addition to better flavour & freshness of the "small scale" eggs, the shells are noticeably thicker, whether this is due to "small scale" eggs having a better diet, or whether they lay less frequently so easier for them to keep calcium levels high (in commercial egg production, once egg laying rate consistently drops too low, the chicken is for the chop, whereas someone with a few back yard chickens often treats them more like pets & will often keep looking after them even when they are so old that laying has stopped)
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