Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Mailing a Potato Chip

The annual Physics Phestival is coming up at our high school in two weeks.

The kids do all kinds of fun physics activities as part of this festival- catapulting marshmallows across the parking lot on homemade catapults, building bridges out of spaghetti, etc.

By far, the most anticipated/dreaded portion of the Physics Phestival is the mailing of a single Pringles brand potato chip.  The Pringles must arrive in one piece to the school, and it must be consumed after the package is opened.

The rules are deceivingly simple:
1) Rectangular boxes only.  No mailing envelopes, tubes, cylinders, and plastic baggies alone will be disqualified.
2) Maximum weight = 100 grams.
3) The packaging material may not be of the commercial variety.
4) The package is to be mailed through the USPS using First Class Mail.
5) The package can not have been mailed from the post office across the street from the high school.

Extra Credit will be given for:
1) The least massive successful device.
2) The successful package mailed from the greatest distance.

I've heard stories over the years of how these chips have been mailed:
One young man put his chip in a plastic baggie and took it, addressed and all to the post office across the street from the high school.  The post office then walked the chip (in it's baggie) across the street to the school.  (The reason for rules #1 and #5)

Another enterprising young person covered their chip in shellac.  Five layers of shellac.  They then put the chip in a cut-down version of the pringles container and mailed it to the school.  (Reason for the rule about having to eat the chip.)  That was also the same year another kid set their Pringles chip into one of those hard plastic blocks that look like paper weights.  (Again, now we know why the kids have to eat the chip!)

I think that the hardest part of this project is meeting the weight requirements.  Getting a package in under 100 grams (That's about 3 ounces!)  is harder than you think.  The boxes alone, with nothing in them, weigh close to 3 ounces as it is.  The key is in the packing material.

My daughter's chip was mailed out yesterday.  It came in at 99 grams.  Close, oh so very close.

I'm currently on the lookout for a smaller box.  She can earn 25 bonus points for mailing a second box, following the same rules... only... it must have LESS mass than the first box!  Challenges, challenges, challenges.

So... how would you ship a single Pringles chip? 

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