DROPPED EGG

PHOTOS BY ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent They came with five-gallon buckets; they came with shoe boxes, balloons, bubble wrap and home-made parachutes, and even a few borrowed mom's finest tea-towels. With the assistance of the Nantucket Fire Department's crew and ladder truck, the Elementary School's Fifth Grade lobbed, floated, dropped and heaved their insulated packages from 105 feet in the air all to see if the precious cargo - a single uncooked egg - would survive impact with the asphalt below. All of Monday's activity was the finale in a "critical thinking" project, where students were asked to intervene (on the eggs' behalf) between the effects of gravity and terminal velocity. The "splat-factor" was high, but many eggs came out unscathed. One egg survived the drop with a protective coating of Cheez Whiz. Photo below: Waiting for another egg to drop are (left to right) Hannah Hutchinson, Shelley Culpitts, Isabella Day, Michaela Yelle, Taylor Kopp and Olivia Rand.