Objective:
- To encourage students to work effectively in teams.
- To develop students' abilities to delegate tasks, make decisions quickly, and deliver results under pressure.
- To develop students creative thinking and problem solving skills.
Overview:
The Egg Challenge is a fun activity, ideal to stimulate effective team working, creativity and effective problem solving with any group.
Split into small groups, learners are each given a real, raw egg, and a simple challenge: to prevent the egg from breaking when dropped from a height of 2 metres!
To assist them, students are given a small number of resources, and set against the clock to complete the challenge.
The activity works well as an ice-breaker, or as the introduction to a larger topic. It takes approximately 20 – 30 minutes to complete.
N.B. This activity uses raw eggs, and will not be suitable for learners will egg allergies.
Activity:
- Organise the group into small teams (2 – 3 per team is ideal)
- Provide each team with a raw egg (stress that the egg is raw, and should be handles carefully!)
- Instruct teams that their eggs will soon be dropped from a height of 2m, and their challenge will be to prevent their egg from breaking. (You may wish to drop eggs from a different height, based on accessibility, and the space available. For example, if safe and appropriate, you may wish to drop eggs from an upstairs window, or in a stair well, to provide a considerable height. The higher the eggs are dropped from, the more exciting the challenge becomes!)
- Inform teams that to complete the challenge, they will be given a set of materials (2x pieces of A4 paper, 4x drinking straws, 1m of string, 1x balloon and a role of sticky tape).
- Using these, and only these materials, they must construct something around their egg, to protect it as it as drops.
- Instruct the group that successful teams will be those whose eggs survive without a crack, and that they have 20 minutes to complete their constructions!
- As groups work, ensure all stick to the rules that have been set, and provide regular time checks. (You may wish to play fast-paced music in the background as students' work, to add additional energy and tension to the task).
- To add an element of silliness, you may wish to encourage teams to come up with team names (egg puns always prove popular), or provide felt-tips for teams to draw character faces on their eggs!
- When time is up, instruct all groups to pass their constructions (eggs included) to the testing area. (In view of the whole class, set up an appropriate area for testing. You may wish to ensure the floor is appropriately covered to cater for any mess if eggs break!)
- One by one, invite teams to explain to the group the reasoning behind their designs, before dropping their constructions from a height.
- Retrieve the egg, and announce to the group whether the team have been successful, inviting applause.
- Finish the session by inviting students to identify the skills they have developed through the activity, and how these apply to their academic and business practice. What was the difference between successful and unsuccessful teams? (Team work? Build Quality? Etc.).
Challenge Solution
There are numerous ways of successfully completing this challenge. Design ideas include;
- Using the paper to make a parachute
- Shedding the paper and using as padding
- Using the balloon as cushioning
- Constructing a basket for the egg using straws.
Successful designs tend to be those where weight is well balanced, where the egg resides near the centre of the construction, and where there is no way of the egg making direct contact with the floor on impact!
Skill Development:
After this activity, students will have a greater appreciation of how they work as teams, and how well they can perform in completing a time-limited challenge as a team under pressure. They will have stimulated their creative and problem solving capacities, and be better equipped for creative thinking, team-working, and problem solving based activities going forward.
Resources:
For each team;
- 2x pieces of A4 paper
- 1m of string
- 4x drinking straws
- 1x balloon
- 1x roll of sticky tape
- (Additional items may be added if desired to make the challenge harder / easier)
For the facilitator;
- A bin bag / floor covering for the testing area (just in case!)
- A step or footstool (if required).