ab ovo

Eggs are tough to crack.

This is the story of the search for a universal equation of the egg: a shape so familiar it disappears, and so slippery that mathematicians, engineers, ornithologists, and poultry scientists have spent the better part of 200 years trying to pin it down.

It is a brief history of oomorphology, the scientific study of egg shapes, followed by an interactive egg designer built from four centuries of mathematics.

the mathematics of egg shapes

From Lamé’s superellipse and Hügelschäffer’s asymmetric curve to Preston’s four-parameter model and Narushin’s universal egg equation, each attempt asks how much complexity a model needs before it can describe the weirdness of the actual thing.