The Egg Cracking Problem

Commonsense Reasoning (CSR) is the area within Artificial Intelligence that
focuses on the endowment of computers with common sense. Up until recently most
problems considered within CSR have been toy problems. That trend is changing
and we will examine/discuss a formalization of the everyday problem of cracking
an egg (The Egg Cracking Problem).

The Egg Cracking Problem is described below and includes examples of questions
that most of us can answer without difficulty:

        A cook is cracking a raw egg against a glass bowl. Properly
        performed, the impact of the egg against the edge of the bowl
        will crack the eggshell in half. Holding the egg over the
        bowl, the cook will then separate the two halves of the shell
        with his fingers, enlarging the crack, and the contents of the
        egg will fall gently into the bowl. The end result is that the
        entire contents of the egg will be in the bowl, with the yolk
        unbroken, and that the two halves of the shell are held in the
        cook's fingers.

        What happens if: The cook brings the egg to impact very quickly?
        Very slowly? The cook lays the egg in the bowl and exerts steady
        pressure with his hand? The cook, having cracked the egg, attempts
        to peel it off its contents like a hard-boiled egg? The bowl is
        made of looseleaf paper? of soft clay? The bowl is smaller than
        the egg? The bowl is upside down? The cook tries this procedure
        with a hard-boiled egg? With a coconut? With an M & M?

More examples of CSR problems (and sometimes soluations) can be found at the
Common Sense Problem Page:

        http://www-formal.stanford.edu/leora/cs