Firefighters help Chesterfield fifth graders with egg drop, testing student creations from fire truck ladder

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — Local firefighters gave egg-cited Chesterfield County fifth graders a chance to test their scientific knowledge on Wednesday, seeing how well the students could protect an egg when dropped from a fire truck’s ladder.

On Wednesday, May 1, fifth graders at Gordon Elementary handed their egg-protecting contraptions to firefighters to carry to the top of their truck’s ladder.

Dena Brown, a STEAM resource teacher at Gordon Elementary, told 8News that this activity was the result of the students’ long-term work on embryology and egg development.

“We’re learning about physics, gravity — friction,” Brown said, in addition to how eggs are formed and how they develop.”

According to Brown, the students — about 50 groups of two or three each — had previously dropped eggs from the announcer’s stand by the football field.

Those whose eggs survived advanced to testing their creations at the impressive heights of an extended fire truck ladder. Brown said she believed about 33 teams had done so.

“A lot of creativity by the students,” Brown said of this whole process, describing how the students were able to use a variety of materials to protect their eggs but with certain constraints to inspire innovation. “A lot of collaboration.”

Brown said that they’d originally thought to drop the eggs from the top of the school — but that having firefighters out at the school was far more special for the students.

According to Brown, even those whose eggs were found smashed after being dropped weren’t a waste of student effort.

“We [at Gordon Elementary] don’t only celebrate the awesome successes,” Brown said. “We celebrate that epic fail, because we learn so much from the epic fail. Whether you failed or you succeeded, there was something to celebrate there — because we could tell what worked and what didn’t.”