A nonprofit group in Osaka has been organizing a contest for high school physics students since 2011 to see if they can build a device that can protect eggs dropped from 10 meters above the ground.

The event, dubbed Egg Drop Koshien, "can serve as a place where students acquire scientific knowledge but also generate innovative ideas on what materials they should use," said Naoki Mishima, a 38-year-old representative of Monozukuri Kids Foundation.

This year's Kansai regional competition was held Nov. 3 on the Ritsumeikan University campus in Kyoto, bringing together 52 teams of three participants each. Each team was given the same materials to work with: scissors, glue and three kinds of paper of differing thicknesses and textures.