What Goes Up, Might Come Down ...

Yesterday both of my children had entries in an egg drop. Forest made a sandwich of two packing pillows of air, and slipped his egg in between them. He called his the "Egg Sandwich". Emily Rose taped three helium balloons together and taped an egg inside the intersection. Her's was called, "What goes up, might come down". It was tricky figuring out how to weigh helium balloons. We had to attach some weight underneath, and weigh it, and then subtract the weight of the weights from the first weight to get the total. It came out to be a negative 31 grams. Yep, it's lighter then air.

When it was Emily's turn, she stood by the edge of the roof and gave her balloons a good toss, out as far as she could get them to go away from the edge of the building. It is difficult to get balloons to go where you want them too. First they went up for a while, then started to gently drift downward.
It took a while, but the weight of the egg slowly drifted the balloons downward and set them gently on the ground, right by the edge of the building.
They weren't anywhere near the frying pan. Hopefully the balloon's negative weight will figure in well in the formula and compensate for the distance from the pan.
Helpful college students measure the distance from the frying pan to the egg, and then gave a thumbs to the judges that the egg wasn't broken.
After everything was all done, some friendly fellows gave Emily Rose a certificate for first prize of this years egg drop. They also gave her $100. What a happy girl! Good design, Emily Rose. All in all, it was a very good day of homeschooling.