with a hard-cooked egg. For years, he had collected odds and ends—string and plastic, paper towel rolls end egg cartons, Styrofoam peanuts, cotton and other packing material. In the world outside of school, limited availability of materials was a real constraint. He was grateful that he taught in Florida where he could open the door and watch the students outside as they climbed to the second floor balcony to conduct their trial runs. He knew that if he taught up North, where they would have to do this activity from the gym balcony, he would have to plan differently as the class would have to move to and from the gym.

On Tuesday, he would have a few raw eggs for each class. He would have several students try to crush them by exerting force with their hands. He would need lab aprons, goggles, and plastic gloves for that. Then he would show the egg drop video. After the first few years, he learned to videotape the class on the day of the egg drop. He had edited a short video of some of the more spectacular egg drops—both successful and unsuccessful. The students enjoyed watching older brothers and sisters, and famous and infamous students. The students would then get into their groups and discuss the features of the containers in which the eggs broke and those in which the eggs did not break. He would challenge them to consider how they might improve the successful egg drop containers. Toward the end of the period, each group would have someone report to the class one thing the group had learned from the video and discussion.

Wednesday would be an intense day as students argued and sketched, sketched and argued, had plans approved, collected materials, bartered with other teams for materials, and tried to build a prototype of their container.

Thursday they would begin class with a discussion of why they needed to build a prototype and why they needed to do some trial runs with plastic and hard cooked eggs. He would ask them the advantages and disadvantages of using the plastic and hard cooked eggs in the trial runs. This would give them an opportunity to consider cost and the characteristics of models. There would be time in class to work and some groups would be ready to begin the field trials. He would need a supply of trash bags to use as drop cloths.

Friday's class would begin by reminding the students that the assessment for the egg drop would not be whether the egg broke, but rather how they would be able to share what they considered as they tried to solve the problem of designing a container for an egg so that the egg would drop 15 feet and not break. He would also remind them that the egg drop was scheduled for Wednesday, ready or not.

Monday would be an uninterrupted work day. On Tuesday they would by work in their groups to determine what would be needed to make their egg drop event a success. In his plans Mr. S. noted that he would need a setup team that would cover the ground below the balcony with trash bags. A clean up crew, again wearing plastic gloves, would gather the bags and get them into the disposal. He anticipated that they would want two class mates to have stopwatches to measure the time it took for the egg to drop. The students would want to determine where the egg should be held for the start of the egg drop. There were always heated arguments about whether the