Egg-periment

Only soft shell, naked eggs

On Thursday I was a substitute teacher for a science class at the high school I formerly taught at. One of my favorite things to do is catch up with my teacher friends, so I was telling another science teacher about an experiment that I did with the boys that didn't work out. He suggested trying it again, but doing a second part to it. I was really excited to try the new part with the boys, so I told my good friend, a social studies teacher, about it. She responded with, "You guys were just hanging out discussing experiments, Nerds!" All the while putting her index finger to her nose pretending to push up glasses she doesn't have. She can name the presidents in order, and I can do cool stuff with an egg.  We all have our area of expertise.

Vinegar eating hard shell

The first experiment was suggested to me by my good friend who is a loyal follower of this blog and thought it would be perfect for the boys. This experiment was to put vinegar and food coloring in a jar with an egg and seal it. (No, we weren't coloring Easter eggs.) We left the jars sealed for 24 hours. The vinegar ate away at the hard shell, but not the soft shell. However, the tongs that we used to remove the egg from the jar broke the soft shell. What's supposed to be left is a colored bouncy ball of sorts.

This second time around when the vinegar ate away the hard shell we gently scooped them out with a spoon. I had to gently wash the eggs to get all the hard shell off, but it wasn't hard anymore and rubbed off easily. Then we rinsed out the vinegar jars and put water in one and corn syrup in the other. The boys gently added the eggs, sealed the jars, and put them on the mantle to watch them.



Eggs going into water and corn syrup

Water floating on top of the
corn syrup with the shrunken egg

After a few hours the corn syrup egg shrunk and the water egg was swollen. The boys kept a close eye on it all day. I explained that the egg shrunk because the water from the egg is pulled through the soft shell into the corn syrup. The egg in water filled up like a balloon. I explained that the water was sucked inside the egg through the soft shell.

We took the eggs out of the jars and were about to hard boil them to continue the experiment when the water egg rolled off the counter onto the floor. It splattered everywhere because it was so full of water. We still hard boiled the corn syrup egg.



Shrunken egg

This was a long, messy experiment; however, the boys and I had a blast. They held the jars to their ears to hear the fizziness when the vinegar was eating the hard shell. They moved the jar around  around to see the water added to the corn syrup from the egg. They were very gentle to keep from breaking the egg so the experiment could continue. I think they might be ready for their first pair of science safety glasses and apron.



The water egg that fell on the floor



Regular hard boiled egg with the
shrunken hard boiled egg