Humpty Dumpty was Real

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

While Humpty Dumpty may be fictional, the famous Egg Drop in the Science Olympiad competition is very real. Science Olympiad is a national non-profit organization that seeks to increase K-12 student and teacher participation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields through various activities, including classroom-based exercises, research, training workshops, and intramural, district, regional, state, and national tournaments. These tournaments are rigorous academic interscholastic competitions, comprised of a series of team events for which students prepare throughout the year (Background | Science Olympiad, 2024). One of the most classic events, the Egg Drop, challenges students to design a device that can prevent a raw egg from cracking when dropped from a set height (Science World, 2024).

In sixth grade, I joined my middle school’s Science Olympiad team. Despite not being particularly strong in science, I was encouraged to join by my sixth-grade science teacher and a close friend. We met bi-weekly throughout the year to prepare for the regional competition scheduled for the spring of my sixth-grade year. Initially, I doubted my ability to contribute to the club—I saw myself as an average science student and felt out of my depth. Thankfully, I was soon proven wrong.

One of the teams I joined was responsible for the Egg Drop competition. Every meeting, we explored new ways to improve our design. Guided by the event’s criteria, we discussed optimal materials, methods of protection, and techniques for releasing the egg to prevent it from cracking upon impact. Although I can't recall the exact height of the competition drop, we began practicing at a much lower height, gradually increasing it as we achieved successful drops. Without realizing it, we were engaging in what is known as Game-Design Teaching and Learning (GDTL). Starting from a manageable height allowed us to experience what James Paul Gee refers to as the “cycle of expertise.” According to Gee and Price, each level requires sufficient practice to make the necessary skills routine. The next level then introduces new challenges to disrupt this routine mastery, pushing us to reorganize our approach through further practice at a higher level (Gee & Price, 2021). Each time we succeeded in dropping the egg from a particular height, we applied our newfound knowledge to the next level. If the egg cracked when the height increased, we revisited our design, improving it to better absorb the impact. Though I’m sure formulas involving gravity and mass were involved, my main memory is the repetitive process of perfecting our structure to survive a 1-foot drop, then a 2-foot drop, then 3 feet, and so on. Had we started from the highest height, I think we would have been discouraged very early on.

Due to the setup of the club, it was an Out-of-School Learning experience that reflected a Digital Video Games Approach (DVGA) (Gee & Price, 2021). Our mission was to drop an egg from the highest possible height without it cracking. Each successful drop allowed us to “level up.” After each attempt—whether successful or not—we could “pause” to consult with our teacher, review past strategies, and even use online resources. Additionally, since we were able to leave our egg container in the classroom, we could save our progress, avoiding the need to rebuild from scratch at each meeting.

I was grateful for that learning experience because it showed me that science could be fun, that I could be good at it, and that I am very much a hands-on learner. I also gained valuable interpersonal, collaboration, and problem-solving skills. The GDTL/DVGA approach that my middle school's Science Olympiad team took proved to be an extremely effective learning method in this experience, as it allowed us to tackle challenges incrementally and provided a safe space to make mistakes and learn from them.

If only we could have created a contraption that would have saved Humpty.

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References:

Background | Science Olympiad. (2024). Soinc.org. https://www.soinc.org/about/background#WhatIsScienceOlympiad

Gee, J. P., & Price, A. (2021). Game-design teaching and learning. Strategies, 34(3), pp. 35-38.

Science World. (2024). Egg drop. Science World. https://www.scienceworld.ca/resource/egg-drop/

Wisdom. (2021, April 13). [Humpty Dumpty image] https://allianceofhope.org/humpty-dumpty-and-me/