Cooper Union

To Keep a Falling Egg from Breaking

POSTED ON: March 21, 2012

On Tuesday, March 20, Cooper Union hosted its annual egg drop competition. Students from all three schools were invited to form teams and create devices that would help safetly deliver a chicken egg from the third-floor portico of the Foundation Building to the concrete ground below.

Egg drop devices were constructed by students on site starting at noon, and teams individually began dropping eggs a little after 1:00. Teams were judged on a vareity of factory, including the total weight of their devices and egg (less is more, in that case) and the team's accuracy in hitting a target with the device and its egg payload when dropped from the portico.

Local media was there on the scene and covered the event. Reporters from The New York Daily News and the New York Times blog got the scoop on this exciting Cooper tradition.

Speaking to a reporter for the New York Daily News, President Jamshed Bharucha commented, “I think this is one of the all-time great college traditions. This is low-tech, low-cost, high-brain.”

More News from The Cooper Union

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.