First came the Egg...
Years ago, when I was about 10 years old, my older brother told me that you could only stand an egg on end on the equinox. I thought they said bounce. Luckily, he corrected me before I started chucking eggs around! He showed me how to do it, and it was kind of hard, but really cool. I decided to take an egg to school and show my science class. This quickly became a tradition, and I balanced eggs twice a year on the equinox. When I went to college, my best friend and I bought a dozen eggs and balanced them in our dorm and just left them there. They fell one by one over the next week or two. I started having egg-balancing parties as a sophomore in college. Most people had never heard of it, or weren't very good at it. From there, it wasn't long before I decided to set a world record!
A man, a plan, and 1290 eggs
While a senior in college, I decided to go about organizing the event to set the world record for the most raw eggs balanced simultaneously. This proved to be now small endeavor. I spent countless hours researching everything from Guinness' guidelines on record breaking to myths about egg balancing. I foiund I had to cut through a lot of red tape in order to schedule a room on campus and to be approved for funrding for advertising and supplies. I made color posters and handed out flyers in order to create interest and get people to the event, both as spectators and participants. I even contacted local and national media represtatives in the hopes of getting some media coverage. I had to do much of this alone. I seemed to be the only one who believed the event would ever take place. But once I set my mind to it, I knew it would become a reality.
Egg Balancing Egg-stravaganza
At around 6:20 am, I arrived with 180 eggs, 100 free t-shirts and a lot of ambition. There were already three students waiting for me for show up! The four of us went into the Garden Court and took a digital picture of the empty floor, then laid down to start balancing eggs. I stood the first one in the middle of the marble dance floor at around 6:30 amand then the others started to join me. Over the next 6 and a half hours, friends and volunteers joined me in our goal to balance 1000 eggs. I didn't think we would ever use all the eggs we brought, but would have been satisfied with 5 or 6 hundred. At around 11:30, I sent a friend to the store for 10 dozen more eggs. By 12:30 we had to send a volunteer to the BYU Creamery for another 6 dozen. I even invited volunteers to bring eggs from home, and I sent another friend to my apartment to raid the fridge.
Egg-celent
In all, we ended up balancing 1290 eggs simultaneously. We had to tell people to leave at 1:00 pm because someone else needed the room. (Given a few more hours, fifty more bucks and another dance floor, we could have easily balanced twice as many.)
Surprisingly, we only had about a dozen break, and none of the ones we left standing in the middle of the floor fell over while we were balancing the rest. We took lots of pictures and video, some of which was used on the Fox 13 Evening News. At the end of the event, we donated the eggs to the Timpanogos Food Bank, an affiliate of United Way. I sent pictures, video, and other documtentation to the Guinness World Record officials, and a couple of months later, I received official recognition and a certificate in the mail. (In accordance with copyright laws, I will not be posting a copy of the certificate on this wesbite.)
It was a great experience. If I were to do it again, I would want more pictures and video coverage, including a time-elapsed camera so I could watch the whole thing in a minute or two. Until then, I am satisfied to hold a world record.
