The Transparent and Bouncy Egg Experiment

If you haven't heard.... Rachelle from TinkerLab and I are both presenting an amazing egg activity each day for Egg Week.  Are you joining in late?  Be sure to check both of our posts from yesterday. Today I am presenting what turned out to become 2 Egg Experiments and you'll understand why once you get to the end of this post.  The ending experiment is AMAZING!

We began with the intention of creating a Bouncy Egg from a raw egg and a hard boiled egg.  This idea intrigued my daughter immensely. I asked her: "What do you think happens when you put an egg in vinegar?"She wasn't sure and I didn't know either because this experiment was new to me.  I told her that according to the directions  here that the vinegar was suppose to create an egg that would bounce. Keep reading to find out how we made our bouncy eggs. 

For this Experiment you'll need:

2 glass jars or plastic containers with covers

1 raw egg

1 hardboiled egg

vinegar (enough to cover both eggs)

First,  put the eggs in the jars and label them (I just labeled the raw egg).  Then pour the vinegar in the jars to cover the eggs. Cover the jars and put them somewhere away from the sun. They should be left in the vinegar for 2 days (48 hours). 

After an hour or so the eggs started bubbling on the outside. The explanation to why vinegar and an egg shell bubble is similar to what happened in our Baking Soda and Vinegar Experiment.  The egg shell has calcium carbonate in it which reacts the same as vinegar and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda).

The hard boiled egg seemed to sink and turn at times. My guess is because it is more dense and the bubbling caused it to move.

The raw egg seemed to float probably because it is composed of just liquid.  C observed that the raw egg got bigger too.  Later I read that the raw egg absorbs the vinegar which makes it bigger.

We observed the shell was coming off by the next day.  With a white egg it would be more difficult to tell unless you touched the egg.

The next step was to rinse the eggs in cold water to remove any shell and then bounce them. After two days we observed the eggs to have totally lost their shell and both seemed to look soft and rubbery.  It did seem to be bouncy, but not extremely bouncy so we left the egg in the vinegar (maybe it needed more time?) You'll never guess what happened to the raw egg.....

I decided to let it bounce on the counter and it did a couple times.....then OH NO!!!! SPLAT! The egg broke open.  I though to myself.....WHAT DID I DO WRONG???  Then later I read here that the raw egg only has a thin membrane (the stuff to the left of the egg) holding it together.....that makes sense now.  The directions I was following here did not say anything about this happening....it just said it would bounce.

I decided that I needed to try this experiment again (still thinking I did something wrong!) When I read further about this experiment with a raw egg here I realized I did everything correctly.  The experiment done with a raw egg is sometimes called: The Transparent Egg Experiment.

The Transparent Egg Experiment

 For this experiment you'll need:

a raw egg (you may want to do a few in case your egg breaks)

vinegar

glass jar or plastic container with lid

Place your raw egg in a jar and cover it with vinegar. You will notice the reaction of the egg shell with calcium carbonate and vinegar.  It will bubble for the first day (as above) The second day you need to change the vinegar. After 48 hours we carefully rinsed the raw egg and noticed it was transparent! Cool! Isn't it amazing? Basically it is an egg without a shell! 

Here you can see that it is flexible because of the membrane.  The membrane thickens with the vinegar and holds the raw egg together.

The Naked raw egg bounces,  but don't bounce too high or too hard or you'll have an egg splatted on the counter top.

Here is the naked raw egg and a hard boiled bouncy egg.  We added blue to the vinegar for the second time we did the bouncy egg.  Both eggs did bounce because of the membrane around the egg.  We noticed the raw naked egg was much larger than the hard boiled bouncy egg. The reason the raw egg is larger is because the egg absorbed some of the vinegar.

This was quite an experiment and we learned a lot.  I hope I have given you some tips so that your experiment is successful.

Have you tried any of these experiments before?

(let me know how your experience goes)

Be sure to check out the amazing egg activity that TinkerLab has in store for you today here.  Make Your Own Egg Tempera Paint