science

The Big Egg Hunt

The Big Egg Hunt is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Big Egg Hunt rather than just read about it. In short: The Big Egg Hunt, also known as the Faberge Big Egg Hunt, was a 2012 charity fundraising campaign in aid of Action for Children and Elephant Family and sponsored by the jeweller Faberge. The two charities backed the largest-ever Easter egg hunt, known as The Big Egg Hunt, in London in the spring of 2012.

Key takeaways

The Big Egg Hunt belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Big Egg Hunt to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Big Egg Hunt from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Big Egg Hunt, also known as the Faberge Big Egg Hunt, was a 2012 charity fundraising campaign in aid of Action for Children and Elephant Family and sponsored by the jeweller Faberge. The two charities backed the largest-ever Easter egg hunt, known as The Big Egg Hunt, in London in the spring of 2012. Around 200 artists, celebrities and designers created and painted metre-high fibreglass eggs which were then placed in selected locations in London. Londoners had forty days from 21 February 2012 to locate the various giant eggs around the capital.

Background The event followed the Elephant Parade of 2010, organized by Mark Shand and Ruth Powys of Elephant Family, which saw 260 decorated fibreglass elephants installed throughout London. Elephant Parade raised around £4m for elephant-related charities through sponsorship and by selling the individual works of art at auction. The top price paid for a decorated elephant was £155,000 for Jack Vettriano's The Singing Butler Rides Again. Elephant Parade was itself inspired by CowParade, which had its beginnings in Switzerland in 1998 but has since spread around the world.

Launch The Big Egg Hunt was first launched in November 2011 by food writer Tom Parker Bowles, who created a special "Eggs Faberge" breakfast for the celebrities in attendance. The metre-high eggs were then distributed to various artists and designers. Among the artists contributing designs were Sir Peter Blake, Polly Morgan, the Chapman Brothers, Vivienne Westwood, Giles Deacon, Zandra Rhodes, Diane von Fürstenberg, Sophie Dahl, Martin Aveling, cartoonist Alex Williams, artist and banker Shivani Mathur and film director Sir Ridley Scott. On 21 February 2012, the Big Egg hunt went "live," with over 200 eggs distributed throughout London in what was billed as the world's largest-ever Easter egg hunt. Each egg displayed a unique code which allowed participants in the egg hunt the opportunity to win a so-called Diamond Jubilee egg, crafted by Faberge and worth over £100,000.

Missing and Rejected eggs On 25 February, it was reported that two of the eggs had gone missing, presumed to have been stolen. The event organisers appealed for their safe return. The two missing eggs were the "Egg Letter Box" created by Benjamin Shine, located on Carnaby Street, and "Hatch" created by artist Natasha Law. Law's egg was recovered by police a few hours later, but had been damaged and needed repairs. Following the theft, Elephant Family founder Mark Shand was reported as saying that the other eggs had been secured and were now "unstealable." On 28 February, it was reported in the Evening Standard that the "Egg Letter Box" had also been recovered by police. One egg, the "sub-terra" egg designed by theme park Alton Towers to promote its "Nemesis" ride, was rejected by a number of locations for being too scary.

Charity auction Around 30 of the eggs were auctioned on 20 March in front of a celebrity audience at the Royal Courts of Justice, where a total of £667,000 was raised for the two charities. Marc Quinn’s egg sold for £40,000 and that of architect Zaha Hadid raised £45,000. A chocolate egg set a record for the world's most expensive chocolate egg. The remaining eggs were auctioned online, with bids closing at 5pm on Monday 9 April 2012. From 3 to 9 April, all the eggs were displayed together, in Covent Garden, for the first and last time.

World record On Easter Sunday, Guinness World Records announced that a new title had been achieved for the most participants in an Easter egg hunt, with more than 12,000 people taking part in the charity fundraiser.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Big Egg Hunt

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Big Egg Hunt claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Big Egg Hunt before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Big Egg Hunt ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Big Egg Hunt

In research: The Big Egg Hunt appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Big Egg Hunt in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Big Egg Hunt is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2012 sculptures, Charity events in the United Kingdom, Elephant conservation, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Big Egg Hunt outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Big Egg Hunt in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Big Egg Hunt means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Big Egg Hunt out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Big Egg Hunt in simple terms?

Why does The Big Egg Hunt matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Big Egg Hunt?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Big Egg Hunt.