There was a key difference, however, between how vertically and horizontally squeezed eggs deformed in the compression experiments—namely, the former deformed less than the latter. The shell’s greater rigidity along its long axis was an advantage because the heavy load was distributed over the surface. (It’s why the one-handed egg-cracking technique targets the center of a horizontally held egg.)
But the authors found that this advantage when under static compression proved to be a disadvantage when dropping eggs from a height, with the horizontal position emerging as the optimal orientation. It comes down to the difference between stiffness—how much force is needed to deform the egg—and toughness, i.e., how
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