The Bird and The Egg

No no no... We are not going to have another "Which came first?" argument over here. However, the bird and its egg have an important role in something that had happened a few days ago.

The conglomeration of the Mallu community in the mess at dinner time had the usual ingredients of gossip and cribbing. Do not get us wrong, but these are some of the few sources of leisure for the frustrated lot of engineering students. The community does boast of its share of entertainers. We are ever ready to make fools out of anyone or in some cases, get ourselves to play the victim.

"I have a question for all you guys." declared Ashish Murali, taking a break from the battle he was waging to finish the organic matter in his plate. "This one figured in one of IIT Madras' question papers." Did we hear IIT? IIT Madras? The next instant, all ears were for the man.

"This is the scenario. A tank measuring 5x6x8m is filled with water to the brim. At the moment of observation, a bird is spotted flying over the tank, at an altitude . At the instant the bird is at a position which is directly above the centre of the tank, it lays an egg. Deduce the consequence."

Hmmm... Interesting problem! So interesting that at once everyone left their platters with its contents and indulged themselves in deep revision of the basics a la the engineering way. Classical laws of motion and projectiles and concepts of centre of gravity and centre mass were brushed up. Doubts regarding the necessary and sufficient conditions were raised. Feasibility of the scenario was questioned. Suddenly someone broke off from his private conversation.

"Are you sure that the egg fell straight into the centre of the tank? Because the bird is flying with a constant velocity in the horizontal direction, while the egg's motion is directed vertically downwards. Hence the resultant motion of the egg must be a projectile with the end of the trajectory displaced from the target."

"Assume that the egg is in free vertical downward fall" Ashish was immediate to clarify.

"Well I guess the egg would break once it comes in contact with the water surface. Considering the height from which the egg falls, it would have immense kinetic energy which abruptly becomes zero when it comes in contact with a barrier posed by the water surface, thanks to the surface tension. This results in gross instability of the system and hence the natural control mechanism counters this by forcing the energy on the shell, resulting in the egg breaking."

"Gosh!! What a national waste! That egg could have been the bread omlette of a hungry man!" was what a philanthropist among us had to say about the problem. Though intended as a joke, he found no takers. Apparently, philanthropy and bread omlette had no place in a serious case study of the crisis at hand with an engineering approach, which was, more or less, the fate of an egg.

The debates continued but was losing steam since Ashish seemed not at all convinced with the arguments and the probable solutions suggested. The IIT tag carried by any problem magnified its true difficulty to explosive dimensions, so mush so that every wannabe techy is ready to break his head to find the possibilities. It is a matter of extreme prestige to crack a problem of the level and it often knighted the victor with titles like "Fundoo" and "Phod-Phad". Well, not one seemed to claim the prize this time and that was a gross disappointment. Everyone seemed to have run out of ideas, but definitely not tired to debate.

Now that everyone had given up, Ashish was challenged to give the real solution for the problem. The star of the night, Ashish, without any second thoughts about whether his answer's validity would be questioned, with his signature expression, revealed to the bunch of the wannabe engineers, who were prepared for a fight if they were to be unconvinced.

"You guys!! When egg laid by the bird falls straight into the tank of water, it would get wet! That's all! So simple!"