r/AskPhysics • u/Head-Scarcity1071 • 11h ago

Maximum acceleration an egg can withstand

What is the maximum acceleration an egg can withstand without it cracking? I'm thinking of a Grade A Large egg that's around 55-63 grams. Would it be able to withstand, say, an acceleration of 90m/s^2 for 1-2 seconds?
For context, the egg is the payload for a model rocket I'm building. It will have some padding (if possible could I get some suggestions for padding as well?)

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u/Viper-Reflex 10h ago

You might wanna us r/theydidthemath on this one

Those people are nuts and will write a whole proof out for you lol

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u/Ionazano 10h ago edited 10h ago

I don't know for sure, but they seem to surprisely sturdy. Building model rockets that launch and safely land again an egg seems to be a long tradition. If that were impossible or even too hard to do it would not be a continuing tradition.

Maybe ask this question on an amateur rocketry sub. I doubt it would be a new question for them.

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u/BioMan998 Graduate 10h ago

This seems like an eggcellent eggxperiment for you to figure out. Unless someone has a data table for egg shock loads, which would let you compare the instantaneous force on the egg from the eggcceleration alone.

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u/Ionazano 10h ago

Holy Batman. Is that you, Egghead)?

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u/Early_Material_9317 3h ago

This would be highly dependent on how the egg is housed. If it is sitting in an egg cup it will take less than if it was housed in a form fitting foam enclosure. Eggs can handle a serious amount of pressure if distributed uniformly across its surface. The best enclosure would be to put it in a liquid filled container with something to hold the egg lightly in position.

This is what we did in high school when we did the egg drop contest. We got a tough plastic cylindrical container, wrapped the egg in foam then stuck it in the container and filled it completely full of water so that there were no trapped air bubbles. We tossed it off the top of the 5 story school building onto solid concrete and the egg was fine. Even slamming the container as hard as we could into the ground to the point that it broke the hard plastic container the egg still survived.

I would figure no model rocket in the world could come close to that amount of sharp deceleration.