Mike Pelloni, a junior elementary education major at Grove City College, likes to egg kids on when it comes to learning.

Thursday morning, he did that -- literally.

The college held its first Physics Day and invited the gifted students from Hillview Intermediate Center to join them. Students in groups of two were asked to prepare an "egg carrier" to be thrown out the window to see if it could keep an uncooked egg from breaking.

"We used a little box and used duct tape. We made a tab with the duct tape for easy access to the egg," said 10-year-old Lali Gill, who with her partner Matt O' Polka, created their carrier, "The Lord of the Eggs." Their box was full of cotton, Easter grass and a balloon with a foam plastic parachute attached to it.

The 17 students learned about physics in creative ways through eggs. They watched as a peeled, hard-boiled egg slipped into a heated small-necked chemical jar with the help of the suction made by the heat. Some students threw eggs against a sheet to try to make them crack against a soft surface.

"I think it's fun and I like it," fourth-grader Bailey Forrest said of the activities. "I like science, and I enjoy learning about it. It seems like people seem to learn better when they enjoy how they're learning."

Watching their egg carriers drop from a window onto or near a target, seeing a rocket launched almost into orbit and chasing it down when it landed and eating nitrogen ice cream were just a few of the fun things the students could do.

"I think we need to do more of these kinds of things to keep them excited about learning," said the gifted-class support teacher Julie Reichard. "And it's a good time of year to have this, too, because they're starting to get spring fever."

Jan Baglia, mother of fifth-grader Janele Baglia, watched as her daughter checked her egg and egg carrier, the "J&M Tape" after it was dropped from the second-floor window of Rockwell Hall of Science. "I think it's a great hands-on experience," she said. "They had a lot of fun making them. I think it's a great way to learn about physics."

Pelloni, who chose to organize Physics Day for a one-credit field experience over writing a 25-page physics paper, agreed.

"All the experiments worked. The kids had a blast with the rocket and we had six out of eight successes on the egg drop," he said, adding that the overall egg-drop winners were fourth-graders Kelly McGill and Emily Deyarmin with "K&E Rainbow."

"Kids love experiments, and I know when I was a kid, I loved doing experiments," he said. "I think it was worthwhile, too, because the kids enjoyed it."

You can e-mail Herald Staff Writer Sherris Moreira-Byers at sbyers@sharonherald.com