Cooper Union Egg Toss in the News

POSTED ON: March 22, 2011

Could throwing an egg from the Foundation Building serve as a pedagogical tool? In this year's Egg Toss Competition it was. Cooper Union students were challenged to design a device that would protect the egg from breaking once being strategically released from the third floor portico. Albert Nerken School of Engineering Professor Wootton encouraged his class to participate and incorporated the egg toss as part of a class exercise to teach the concepts of safety design and engineering. "The goal was to analyze all the variables engineers take into account when studying things like automobile crashes or sports injuries," said Professor Wootton, who also entered the competition and won first place. Media was invited to the event and coverage was wide spread: Wall Street Journal, Metro and DNAInfo and footage appeared on WSJ.com, NY1, WPIX-Ch 11, and CBS MarketWatch.

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.