Which is More Fragile, Eggshells or Taco Shells?

Taco shells are notoriously fragile. They break all the time. They break in the box. They break when you open the box, they break when you fill them with taco fixin's. They break when you set them down, they break when you pick them up. 

That's the reputation. Taco shells can't take the pressure, and this is a big problem. This is the reason no one manufactures cars in Mexico¹. 

With a fresh set of eggs and tacos, we decided to conduct a series of tests to determine which is more fragile, taco shells or eggshells?

When Americans say eggs, they are usually talking about chicken eggs. We buy them by the dozen, or perhaps by the 18, as shown above. The eggs come in styrofoam or paperboard cartons, giving little soft cups for each egg with a little space in between.

The taco shells are held in a corogated plastic tray, then wrapped in plastic film and placed inside of a generously large box.

It is the taco shells, not the eggs, which are nested.

Because I wanted to test the egg SHELL, we decided to blow the eggs. That is a term for poking small holes into each end of the egg and blowing the egg whites and yolks out, leaving an empty shell. The eggs would be less strong this way, comparable to the empty taco shells.

In order to test shell strength, we would drop balls onto the shells. The first test was cotton ball against a taco shell.

Here is a photo of the drop zone. We would drop each ball from a height of three feet (about 1 meter) onto the target object below.

The cotton ball did not break the taco shell. It bounced off harmlessly.

The second test would be slightly more challenging. Ping pong ball against the taco shell.

The ping pong, or table tennis ball struck the taco shell and bounced off of it.

The taco shell wasn't damaged by ping pong balls.

The next test was to see if tennis balls would crack the taco shell.

 

Please Read Page Two of Eggshell vs. Taco Shell >

Yep! The tennis ball broke the shell into bits! We had found the breaking point of taco shells.

Next, we tried a baseball. A baseball is heavier and harder than a tennis ball, so we assumed that the baseball would also crack a taco shell. But we conducted the test anyway.

The first shell broke.

We tried it again. Yes, the second shell broke.

We tried it a bunch more. The baseball always broke the taco shell.

It is pretty fun to drop baseballs onto taco shells.

We also tried a brick.

Bricks are harder to aim.

Finally, we were ready to try the eggshells! The taco shells had stood up to the cotton balls and the ping pong balls, but had been crushed by the tennis balls and baseballs. This was a good start, but if we saw the same results with eggshell impacts, neither shell would be proven superior.

We prepared our balls.

First, the cotton ball.

First you see the egg.

Then you see the shadow.

Then you see the cotton ball.

 

 

Please Read Page Three of Eggshell vs. Taco Shell >

Kids have been dropping cotton balls on eggs since the late 1800s. Cotton balls don't break eggs.

We moved up to the ping pong ball.

When the ping pong ball struck the egg. We heard a snap. Sure enough, the eggshell had been cracked!

Sue and I were both surprised. We had both guessed that the eggs would come out on top, and yet here we were, staring at an eggshell cracked by a falling ping pong ball!

We continued with the tennis ball.

The tennis ball split our target eggshell in two.

Baseballs closed out the inning with two more strikes.

The baseball crushed the eggshell without remorse.

This is why they don't sell eggs at Yankee Stadium.

The tests were complete, and it was finally time for some crushed nachos scramblers.

RESULTS
The ping pong ball impacts made the difference in this comparison. Taco Shells can withstand a ping pong ball impact, eggshells cannot. As unlikely as it seemed, taco shells are stronger.

I guess it is a good thing that baby chicks don't have to break out of a chamber of fried corn meal.

 

Back to Eggshell vs. Taco Shell page 1 >

¹ nearly 2.4 million cars built in Mexico in 2011 - most of them exported for sale in other countries