building | Webster City Community Schools

Making science fun isn’t only evident in the younger grades. In fact, teachers at Webster City High School are eager to do the same.

For the first time, science teachers Julie Swanson and Ayn Eklund have done a “Helmet Egg Drop” with their students.

“Each year, approximately 67,000 high school football players are diagnosed with a concussion,” Swanson said. “One of my football students told me he is currently struggling due to a concussion. Because this is a real problem for all schools and the numbers are too high, we investigated the question: could a safer helmet be designed?”

Students then designed helmets and tested their helmets on a raw egg.

“The goal was to drop them out of the second story of the high school and not to break their egg,” teacher Eklund said.

Eklund’s first class didn’t have any eggs break, but some did in her later classes.

“We dropped roughly 6 dozen eggs, and I’ll bet only around 1 dozen broke,” she said. “We didn’t really keep track, just what the kids were saying.”

According to Eklund, students received the assignment on a Monday, brought materials on a Tuesday, and dropped the helmets and eggs on a Friday.

But their work wasn’t over with the drop.

“They calculated the speed at which their egg and helmet fell and the force at which it hit the ground,” Swanson added. “It was fun and a little messy.”

Below are photos and videos of students creating their helmets from both Eklund’s and Swanson’s classes.