The plunger portion of the trident was meant to crack the egg by applying pressure on the top of the egg. Our development of the plunger was started off by examining the design of a hand-held mechanical egg-cracker that we found on youtube.

[Insert screenshots]

Based on this design, we assumed that a thin plunger would be ideal for cracking the egg due to the smaller surface area, which would translate to greater pressure. Unfortunately, our first attempt at utilizing such a mechanism was a failure, as the pressure was too great, creating a hole at the top of the egg instead.

[Insert image of holey egg]

According to a very reliable source (a youtube video), it should be possible to crack the egg with a thin plunger, so we tried to increase the pressure on the egg further by switching to a triangular shaped beak. Unfortunately, we ended up with the exact same result. Guess I should have paid more attention in Physics.

[Insert image of another holey egg]

We realized that the problem here wasn’t that there was too little pressure, but rather that there was too much. The force being exerted on the egg by the plunger far outweighed the normal force acting on the egg from the claw, resulting in the topside puncture. Thus, we switched to a wider plunger, which would, hopefully, allow us to crack the egg with ease.

[Insert Image of wide plunger]

Unfortunately, that did not happen, as it resulted in there being too little pressure to crack the egg with a reasonable amount of force. We realized that the solution was not only to reduce the pressure being applied on the top of the egg, but to increase the pressure being applied on the bottom of the egg as well. After some modifications to the claw, which was mentioned in a previous post, we finally got that egg on a spike.