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The key to a successful egg drop experiment? Drop it on its side
Eggs are less likely to crack when dropped horizontally vs. vertically, contradicting conventional wisdom.
As I wrote for Slate back in 2012, "The key is to align the eggs so that the narrow pole is pointing upward, and step in such a way to distribute your weight over the entire surface area, to avoid overloading any one eggshell." Of course, there is the classic chef's one-handed egg-cracking technique— immortalized in the 1954 romantic comedy, Sabrina —which involves holding the egg between the fingers and thumb and rapping the edge sharply against the rim of the bowl to achieve a clean break. Specifically, the scientists devised a mathematical formula linking the ovoid geometry of the eggshell and its rigidity—a property that, along with strength (a related but distinct concept), accounts for how much force a given object can withstand before breaking.
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