Junior Infants have been discussing Humpty Dumpty coming up to Easter. We felt sorry for poor Humpty after he fell off the wall and couldn’t be put back together. So we discussed how we could have protected Humpty Dumpty when he fell. We decided to test which material might have protected the poor egg.
Each group chose a different material to fill a bag containing an egg. The bag was then dropped from the same height off the table in the classroom to see if it would protect the egg from breaking. Groups chose Play Doh, water, flour, popcorn and paper from materials provided.
We made predictions on which material would work best. Water was the clear favourite with 7 predicting it would protect the egg the best. It was a fairly even split across the others with 4 predicting flour and popcorn and 3 predicting Play Doh and paper would do the best job.
We were surprised that the eggs in the paper and Play Doh broke on the first drop. The egg in the water broke when we increased the height of the drop. We couldn’t believe that the eggs in flour and popcorn survived.
We needed a bigger height so decided to drop them from a first floor window in the school. Even more amazingly the eggs both survived. We figured if we ever fall from a wall we want to be inside a bag of flour or popcorn for protection.
