Ya’ gotta break a few eggs
Stone Elementary students learn STEM theory, practice with egg drop event
Andy Brosig/News-Sun
To the accompaniment of many cheers, a few groans and a good number of kerplunks, thuds and splats, students at Stone Elementary in Hobbs got a first-hand lesson in Science, Technology, Engineer and Math by dropping eggs from a Hobbs Fire Department truck last week.
It was the school’s first-ever egg drop. Students designed and built devices to protect a raw chicken egg from the impact of an estimated 40-foot fall. Stone Principal Heather Campbell brought the idea to the school from her previous campus, College Lane Elementary, where she said it had been one of the most popular event days for years.
“The kids (at College Lane) always loved it so I decided to bring it here,” Campbell told the News-Sun on Thursday. “This is always a fun event. It’s one of my favorites every year.”
The principal is simple: Students get the parameters of what they can build. They then went home and, working with their parents, brainstormed ideas, planned what they want to build and how, and put everything together.
“I sent home just the basic instruction, size parameters and those kinds of things,” Campbell said. “After that, kids and parents get to be as creative as they want to be.”
Then, on the day of the egg drop, kids and parents joined teachers and staff in front of the school on West Calle Sur Street in Hobbs. One of the teachers has a brother with the Hobbs Fire Department, who brought the department’s aerial bucket truck to the school to serve as the launch platform for the day.
Then, one-by-one, the student’s creations were released by firefighters. Depending on the design of the containers, some floated gracefully to the ground, while others took a more direct route back to terra firma.
Along with Hobbs firefighters, students from the Hobbs Freshman High School chapter of the National Honor Society volunteer to help clear away the student’s designs and check if the eggy passengers had survived the journey. Designs varied from parachute set-ups to slow the descent to extreme padding concepts to absorb the impact.
After the final egg had completed its journey, the students headed back to the rest of their day, amid exclamations of “Cool,” “Awesome,” and “That was so much fun!”
And staff and parents seemed to be enjoying the day as much as the kids.
“This is always kind of the highlight of the year,” Campbell said. “It’s one of my favorite events to kind of wrap up state testing.
“It brings in science, it brings in STEM, and it brings in the community and the families. It introduces STEM in so many different ways and they also get to see the (firefighters) be such a big part of our community. And you can see, everybody’s grinning and smiling.”
