Hi Julian,

Since you have mechanical engineering training, and
had so much fun protecting eggs in your student days,
does this mean you'll lead the effort to design a
crushable bull bar for our vanagons?  hahaha.
Seriously, I think our vanagons are just as nice as
the eurovans with the exception of not having a hood.

Rob

--- Julian Burden <julian.burden@SYMPATICO.CA> wrote:
> Ahhh - I remember my days as a Mech Eng student . .
> .
>
> We had a similar competition - to build a device to
> hurl an unboiled egg as
> far as possible without breaking the egg. Method of
> propulsion was 5
> "standard" rubber bands.
>
> There were all sorts of rules and regs, I put heaps
> of thought into it and
> thought my device was quite clever - it wasn't.
>
> <Cut Long Story Short>
>
> The guy who came second had done no work. He came
> along, used one of the
> bands as a sling-shot on his hand - no device around
> the egg!
>
> After his egg survived we all (hey, Eng students,
> remember?) started
> throwing these RAW eggs around, and none of them
> broke! (The ground was very
> soft and muddy.)
>
> Now, whose idea was it to invite the media into the
> University and arm a
> bunch of Eng students with eggs???
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Robert Dalton" <dieselsong@YAHOO.COM>
> To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2002 12:59 AM
> Subject: Re: re. Vanagon bull bars/brush guards...
>
>
> > Exactly!  The bumper just has to collapse at the
> > proper rate for a high speed crash.  Some
> University
> > showed an experiment where mechanical engineering
> > students were trying to keep an egg on a falling
> > platform from breaking when it hit the ground.  No
> > amount of cushioning under the egg kept it from
> > breaking.  The egg (just like a person) acquired
> too
> > much velocity to survive when it stopped suddenly
> even
> > against a soft pillow surface.  A couple of tin
> cans
> > with their ends cut out when mounted under the
> > platform did the trick,  because they collapsed
> along
> > their long dimension absorbing the energy so the
> egg
> > didn't have to.  I feel frustrated sometimes
> because
> > it seems like the principles of making a car safer
> are
> > well known.  Unfortunately it would take some
> clever
> > mechanical design to figure out how to incorporate
> > structures like those tin cans in front of the
> > vanagon.
> >
> > Rob
> >
> >
> >
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