New York Post reporter Marissa Matozzo cracks into a new study by MIT researchers that uncovers the best way to keep eggs from cracking. The researchers found that eggs dropped sideways are less likely to break than those dropped vertically. “It turns out the sides can take more of a beating than their pointy or rounded ends, and that could mean a lot for proper storage,” says Matozzo.
Forbes reporter Amanda Kooser spotlights a new study by MIT scientists that has found eggs are less likely to crack when dropped on their side. “The researchers put eggs through their paces in two different tests,” explains Kooser. “One was a static compression test that applied increasing force to the eggs. The other was a drop test.”
Researchers at MIT have discovered that eggs dropped on their side are less likely to crack than those dropped on their tips, reports Doyle Rice for USA Today. The researchers conducted both a drop and compression test on the eggs, and the findings “suggest that future research could explore the application of these findings to engineering scenarios, such as how structures respond to dynamic loads,” writes Rice.
A study by MIT researchers has found that “dropping an egg horizontally is more likely to keep it intact than a vertical drop,” reports Ed Cara for Gizmodo. “People tend to have better intuition for stiffness and strength, which are important in statics,” explains Prof. Tal Cohen. “It is common that they refer intuitively to the redistribution of a load along the arch. However, when dynamics are involved, toughness is also an important quantity.”
MIT researchers have discovered that “eggs are less likely to crack when they fall on their side,” reports Adithi Ramakrishnan for the Associated Press. “It’s commonly thought that eggs are strongest at their ends — after all, it’s how they’re packaged in the carton,” explains Ramakrishnan. “The thinking is that the arc-shaped bottom of an egg redirects the force and softens the blow of impact. But when scientists squeezed eggs in both directions during a compression test, they cracked under the same amount of force.”
Researchers at MIT have found that eggs dropped on their sides and not their tips are more resilient and less likely to crack, reports Veronique Greenwood for The New York Times. The researchers found that “eggs dropped so they landed on their sides were substantially less likely to crack,” writes Greenwood. “When they hit, the shell was able to compress, absorbing some of the blow. Eggs dropped on their ends, where the shell is stiffer, did not show such flexibility.
Chronicle visits Prof. Skylar Tibbits and the Self-Assembly Lab to see how they are embedding intelligence into the materials around us, including furniture, clothing and buildings. Prof. Caitlin Mueller and graduate student Sandy Curth are digging into eco-friendly construction with programmable mud by “taking a low-cost material and a really fast manufacturing system to make buildings out of very, very low climate impact materials.” Says Tibbits: “MIT is a really wild place, and most people know of it for its technical expertise…But what I am really inspired by is on the creative end, the design spectrum. I think the mix of those two is super special.” He adds: “We can ask the right questions and discover new science, and we can also solve the right problems through engineering.”
MIT has been named among the top-performing intuitions in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2024, reports The Economic Times. MIT ranks “first in 12 subjects, maintaining its stronghold in fields like engineering, technology, and computer science,” explains Economic Times.
Researchers from MIT have “identified genes that the tuberculous bacteria rely on to survive and spread,” reports Allison DeAngelis for STAT. “Until now, very little was known about how tuberculous bacteria survived temperature changes, oxygen levels, humidity, and other environmental factors during the journey from one person’s lungs to another’s,” explains DeAngelis.
Prof. Sarah Millholland, Prof. Christian Wolf, Prof. Emil Verner, Prof. Darcy McRose, Prof. Marzyeh Ghassemi, Prof. Mohsen Ghaffari and Prof. Ariel Furst have received the 2025 Sloan Research Fellowship for “being among the most promising scientific researchers currently working in their fields,” reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes. “Sloan Research Fellows are chosen in seven scientific and technical fields—chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, and physics,” explains Nietzel.
Postdoctoral associate Mostafa Hamouda speaks with Washington Post reporter Scott Dance about the recent cold blast that is bringing “frigid air that normally swirls above the North Pole to places much farther south.” Hamouda explains: “You need really cold air in the pole to have a very fast-spinning polar vortex.” Any warming “slows the whole circulation down.”
Graduate student Chase Hartquist speaks with Engineeringness reporter Hassan Ahmed his work developing a “universal law governing network fracture energy, providing a unifying framework for understanding material toughness across a wide range of material types.” Hartquist explains: “Our discovery also directly impacts the emerging field of architected materials, whose inherent structures drive their unique performance characteristics.” He adds: “By studying and optimizing performance in this class of materials, we can better understand the extent to which this law can apply generally in cutting-edge material design for many practical applications.”
Prof. Desirée Plata speaks with C&EN reporter Prachi Patel about her work “trying to make our chemical processes and industries compatible with human and ecological health.” Says Plata of what she is most proud of in her work: “As professors, we produce papers and patents, but people are the most important thing we produce. The faculty of the world are training the next generation of researchers. There’s a perception right now that AI is going to solve all of our problems, but it cannot without good physical science information. We need a trained workforce. We need patient chemists who want to solve important problems.”
Shiv Bhakta MBA '24, SM '24 and Richard Swartwout SM '18, PhD '21 co-founded Active Surfaces, a solar tech company that has developed “a new kind of solar collector so thin and flexible it can be attached to anything under the sun,” reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “The company prints solar cells onto a plastic sheet, using methods not too different from those used to print newspapers,” explains Bray. “The resulting cells can generate electric power nearly as efficiently as today’s heavy, thick silicon panels.”
Inspired by his daily walks, Prof. Elfatih Eltahir and his colleagues have developed a new way to measure how climate change is likely to impact the number of days when it is comfortable to be outdoors, reports Maddie Browning for WBUR. “I find people walking, jogging, cycling and enjoying the outdoors,” says Eltahir. “That's what motivated me to start looking at how climate change could really constrain some of those activities.”