The Bouncy Egg

Have you ever seen a raw egg bounce?  How about seeing the yolk of an egg while looking at it from the outside?  No, you don’t need x-ray vision or superpowers…you just need to try out this fascinating experiment (one of 15 that you download for free here)!  The idea for this experiment came from The Chocolate Muffin Tree and Steve Spangler Science (two awesome resources).

A word of warning:  Patience is the name of the game with this experiment.  Your child will have to wait at least 3 days before getting to “bounce” their egg.

Here’s what you’ll need:  a glass jar, a raw white egg, and white vinegar.

1.  Carefully place a raw egg in a glass jar.  Pour enough vinegar in the jar to cover the egg.  Let your child watch what happens as you add the vinegar…tiny bubbles will cover the surface of the egg!   Let the egg sit for 24 hours.

 2.  After 24 hours, carefully dump the vinegar out (it might help to remove the egg from the jar first).  After the vinegar has been dumped, place the egg back in the jar and add some “fresh” vinegar…

 …Let it sit for 2 more days.

 The egg gets significantly larger sitting in all that vinegar, so it might be more difficult to get out of the jar!

 Let your child hold the egg and observe what they see.  Since the vinegar has eroded the white shell, the egg yolk can be seen from the outside!

Gently bounce the egg on a table (no more than 6 inches from the table) and let it roll.

 Just be careful…even though it bounces, it can still break!  We learned that lesson after our bouncy (and slippery) egg fell off our patio table and onto the deck.

The Science Behind It:

The shell of an egg is made of calcium carbonate.  When you place the egg into the vinegar, you see bubbles, which is the chemical reaction of the acid in the vinegar reacting with the calcium carbonate to produce carbon dioxide.  You’ll also notice that the egg gets larger as it sits in the vinegar.  That is because some of the vinegar is absorbed in the egg through its semi-permeable membrane!

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