Welcome to the fifth installment of Knight Life, a series of photographs that capture moments of daily life at Altamont. In this installment, Lynn Kalchik’s eighth-grade Physical Science classes participate in an egg drop experiment on March 11. Students try to design systems that keep the eggs from breaking.

“The assignment is two-part," she says. "In the first part, they’re dropping [the eggs. Inside the gym], they have a 'rover.' Their rover has to go down a ramp and we’re going to see how far it can roll.” 

Kalchik says the key to a successful egg drop is, “If they can slow down the drop velocity, that helps. The only one that actually cracked today was just a box that had cushioning inside but had no parachute or balloon to slow it down.” She adds, “This is the end of our motion unit. So, they’ve learned about velocity, acceleration, momentum, and Newton’s law, so now they’ve had to put all those together.” 

This assignment is meant to teach practical skills. “They had a budget. That was kind of the trick thing. They were given 100 credits and only certain materials they could use. They had to balance everything [like in] the real world.” 

Below are more photos of Ms. Kalchik's egg drop experiment.

Aerial view. Ms. Kalchik is ready to record the descent below.

Natalia Jimenez-Arellano tries out her team's contraption.

Part of the competition also included a fast journey down a ramp for the protected eggs.