Question: You and a friend are participating in an egg throwing contest. The goal of this contest is to throw an egg as far as possible without cracking or breaking it. Describe your strategy for catching eggs that have been thrown from a long distance without breaking them in physics terms. Use terms like momentum and momentum.

The student’s response was:

When trying to catch an egg with the greatest distance, there are several things to keep in mind. Things like the weight of the egg, how far you throw it, and how you catch the egg can change the results a lot.

First of all, when throwing something as small as an egg, keep in mind that the greater the distance, the more force is exerted to throw the egg. The more force exerted on the egg, the more momentum there will be. This is especially important when catching the egg, as doing it the wrong way can cause it to crack.

Egg capture can be particularly difficult, because the egg is very brittle and fragile. To reduce momentum, you should grab the sides of the egg so it doesn’t splash onto your hand. The egg’s momentum, which is its average force over a period of time, must be reduced to ensure a safe landing of the egg. By grabbing the sides of the egg, you are reducing its momentum and momentum to then make the egg fall into your palm.

The tutor’s response was: To win the competition, we must throw the egg as high as we can. So when it falls down, it will also have a high speed. The mass of the egg is fixed. So if we need to win this competition, we have to be prepared to face a big boost that we will receive when it drops. Let’s say we take time “t” to catch this egg. So the force in catching the egg will be “F” given by:

F*t=m(vf-vi)
Then F= m(vf-vi)/t

And we have already seen that the mass m is fixed.

Also Vf = 0 because the egg finally stops after catching it.

Vi is the speed that was just before catching the egg and we have already seen that it will be very high if we want to win the competition.

Now, to decrease the force, the only thing we can do is keep the contact time with our hands “t” as high as possible.

If we do that, we will be able to reduce the force F to such a limit that the egg, although quite brittle, does not break.

To increase the contact time we need to catch the egg in sweeping action. We need to move our hands down so that the relative speed between the hand and the egg is less. This will effectively increase the time “t” and thus reduce the Force F.