Egg Experiment

I came across a video of an egg experiment recently. I thought it would be a fun thing to do with the kids so we gave it a try. It was fun. Sarah ended up being the one was most interested. We disolved the shell off the egg. Then did a few things with the 'naked' egg.

First we took 2 glasses and filled them about 2/3 with white vinegar. We added a little more after we put in the egg because they weren't quite completely covered.

Sarah is watching to see what happens. We started this right before bedtime and that's why she is looking freshly showered and in her pj's.

 After just a few seconds the magic began to happen. You could see tons of little bubbles all over the outside of the egg. 

 The next day or about 18 hours later. We took the eggs out of the vinegar and rubbed the rest of the shell off. It came off quite easily.  The vinegar dissolves the shell and makes the egg membrane a bit rubbery. So these naked eggs bounce. :) We did not try to bounce from more than like 2 or inches from the counter. We only made 2 naked eggs and we didn't want them to break. 

 Then we took our 'naked' eggs and put them in 2 different liquids. The one of the left is in water. The one of the right is in corn syrup.  

 After about 18-24 hours this is what they looked like. The egg in the water got a lot bigger and the one is the syrup shrunk. You can't really tell by the below picture but the shrunken one is a bit wrinkly. Ok so I will try to give the scientific explanation as to why this happens. The egg membrane pulls water into the egg or puts water out the egg to try to equalize the water content on both sides the membrane. So the egg in the water would pull water in because there would be more water outside the egg than inside. Where as the egg in the corn sryup (corn sryup doesn't have much water in it) would put water out because there is more water in side the egg out. This is called osmosis.

 So to prove that the egg is pulling water in and putting water out we added blue food color to the water and put both eggs in. We let them sit for a few hours then I took the bigger egg out and put it in the corn syrup. Sarah's question was 'will it turn the corn syrup blue?' Good question...... and the answer is.......Yes. Well technically it doesn't turn the corn syrup blue it just puts out blue water from the egg. Sorry no picture for the blue corn syrup I forgot to take one.

So the result was this.......

 The above picture is after about 24 hours. So the shrunken egg from before is now big again and blue. The big egg from before is now shrunken and wrinkly. The small egg actually feels pretty cool.

After playing with the eggs and discussing what happened Sarah asked 'what would happen if we cook them?' Yet another good question that I didn't have the answer to so we tried it. 

 The result is in the below picture. The naked eggs stayed together and the membrane did not break while cooking. The eggs are a good bit lighter. But what does the inside look like? Is it blue?

 Sarah peeling the smaller blue egg that was in corn syrup.

 The egg that was in the corn syrup was harder than a normal egg.  Below is a picture of that egg.

 Then came the egg that was in the water. I just poked it with a knife and it split open and was spurting water.

 The white part (now blue) of the egg was very soft and broke apart really easy.

 

This was an experiment I would suggest for doing with kids that are a bit older.All in all I think our experiment was a success. We learned a few things about osmosis and what acid does. Anything that gets my kids' minds working and they don't even realize they are learning is a success in my opinion.