What is the smallest container you can design to hold 4 eggs?
Please note that this activity should be done with adult supervision
First of all, you will need four medium chicken eggs - we recommend that, if possible, you make your own out of plasticine/modelling clay
The task is to make the smallest possible container out of cardboard for these to be stored inside.
Here are some 3D-shape templates to help get you started with how to make a container.
Remember to leave a side open to act as a lid for inserting and removing the eggs.
Want to know how well you did?
Then we need to do a little bit of maths.
We measured up the size of an egg carton designed to hold 12 medium eggs:
We simplified the maths involved by treating the box as a rectangle rather than a series of egg shapes attached to each other.
With these measurements we calculated the volume of the box as:
Length × Width × Height = 29 × 11 × 7 = 2233cm3
We're only interested in the size taken up by 4 egg sections of the carton. So, 12 (the number of eggs this carton holds) ÷ 4 (the number we're interested in) = 3
So, we need to divide the volume of the whole box by 3 to calculate the volume of box for four eggs:
2233cm3 ÷ 3 = 744cm3 (rounded to nearest whole number).
Now it's your turn.
You will need to work out the volume of your container.
Does your container have a volume lower than 744cm3?
Here are the 3D-shapes templates with volume calculations.