Water density and floating egg experiment

This experiment was suggested by a fan of Nerdy Science, Stephanie, as a fun experiment to do with eggs.

Experimental Questions:
Are eggs denser than plain water? Are eggs denser than salt water?

Background:
When things are more dense than water, they sink when placed in water. If they are less dense than water, they float.

Test your knowledge to form your hypothesis (educated "guess"):
Gather a few items from around the house and see if they sink or if they float. Which items are more dense than water? Which items are less dense than water? Can you guess what will happen to the egg when placed in water? Do you think anything different will happen to the egg when placed in salt water?

Materials:
-1 glass of plain tap water
-1 glass of plain tap water + salt (amount varies)
-1 or 2 raw eggs, non-cracked

Methods:
-Gently drop an egg into the tap water. What happened?
-Gently drop an egg into the salt water. What happened?
-Add more salt to the salt water. Did that change any of your results?

Our Results:
Our egg in plain water sank to the bottom of the cup.

Our first attempt at the salt water resulted in our egg being neutrally buoyant and hovering above the bottom of the cup:

So, we took a guess about what would happen if we added more salt. Based on the semi-floating egg above result, J guessed that the egg will "really float" when we added more salt.

He was right!

Conclusions (via J's own words):
-"Water can't hold up the egg."
-"Water with salt CAN hold up the egg. Science is amazing!"

The egg is more dense than plain water, but with enough salt, the egg is less dense than salt water.

Thanks, Stephanie, for this fun addition to our egg experiments!

Egg Maracas

We're approaching Easter. It's a good time to reiterate how much I hate eating just eggs, but I have no problem with using eggs for science experiments. Last year's experiments were fairly extensive, but I'll have some new ones to add this year.

The first one comes from an idea listed on Kiwi Crate's DIY website, Egg Maracas. I enjoyed the idea because somehow we end up with collections of these plastic eggs, and it feels so wasteful to just toss them.

Music is very science oriented. Sound, sound waves, pitch, tone, rhythm, etc all have their place in science. I never played a musical instrument, and I was banned from my elementary school chorus. I stuck to dance, which is deeply rooted in music, in particular rhythm and patterns.

Anyways, the basic maraca is easy to make. For each maraca, we used:
- A plastic egg
- Rice
- 2 matching plastic spoons (we collect these too)
- Masking tape (nothing fancy on our end)

What we did:
1. We filled the plastic eggs with rice. Since we had 3 eggs, we decided to use 3 different amounts of rice to see how that would affect the sound.
2. We taped the eggs shut since they seem to easily split open.
3. We placed the spoons so they cupped the egg and the handles met at the bottom. We needed two sets of hands, one to hold the spoons and the egg and one to tape.
4. While one person holds the spoons and egg in place, the other person tapes around the spoons and the egg (just once should be fine) and down where the handles meet.
5. We covered the whole thing (except Big J's maraca) with tape.
6. We decorated the tape with Sharpies (note that rubbing alcohol takes off Sharpie marker in case you have reservations about handing your little one a permanent marker). Crayola rubs off too easily when placed on masking tape.

Lil J, Big J, and my maracas (from L-R)

Science:
-Guess which egg has the most rice? You can weigh them or listen to the sound difference. A fuller egg should sound deeper.
- Play a "Simon" like rhythm game where you give a pattern of shakes and your kid repeats them. Get more complex as you go. Let your kid be the leader too.
- Use other items instead of rice. How do beans or pennies sound in your shaker?


**I apologize for the poor lighting and Craisins (and much more you don't see) on our kitchen floor. We were invaded by ants, so what's normally in our cupboards is sprawled on our counters, table, and floors. Good news was this experiment was able to be done in a very small space (and impromptu - right before bed).

Spinning eggs

If you were handed an egg, would you be able to tell whether it was raw or hard boiled?

Here's a simple experiment to do, spin them:

The hard boiled egg is the one that easily spins.  Why?  The hard boiled egg is solid on the inside; the center of gravity is constant in the hard boiled egg.  The raw egg is filled with liquid, allowing the center of gravity to shift inside of the egg when spun, making it difficult to keep spinning.

Neat, huh?


**Thanks to hubby John who pointed this out to me.

See through eggs!

Yesterday, I explained how to peel a hard boiled egg without using your hands.  I found a link on Pinterest that had a picture of a see-through egg (initially the link was broken but I just found a good link after our experiment was over).

Pour enough vinegar to cover a egg in a clear glass.  Carefully add the raw egg.  Wait 4 days.  Rinse egg to get the excess shell/foam off.  And this is what you get:

It's so neat to see inside of an egg!  The texture of the egg is squishy, bouncy, and pretty fun.  The yolk also still moves inside.  I think it's pretty cool!

**Warning: this started out as a raw egg and sat out for 4 days (in vinegar), so if and when you handle it make sure to wash your hands and any surfaces it touches immediately.

Naked Eggs - peel an egg with vinegar

This is easy! Fill a glass (clear is best) with enough vinegar to cover an egg. Then, carefully place a hard boiled egg in it and watch what happens.

Bubbles form on the eggshell. Eventually after a few days (we forgot about it till after 4 days), the egg will be naked! The whole shell disintegrates. It's so neat.

Some things to note when the experiment first begins:
*Density of the egg - does it sink or float?
*What's changing in the egg to make it float? How long does that take?

We have another experiment in the works with a raw egg. I saw it on Pinterest (though the link to the blog posting was broken). It's in day 2 and the shell is getting thinner and thinner. It would be interesting if we could see inside of an egg. I'll let you know how it works.

J quote from this experiment: "What's going to happen? What's going to happen?" He's such a little scientist.

Dye your own Easter Eggs

I decided that we'll be creating our own Easter Eggs without kits. I found this recipe for dyeing eggs at home.  This is a great activity since we have a jug of vinegar (for science), water, lots of food coloring (for cake decorating), and lots of crayons (because we have an almost 3 yr old).

Set up:

• Add 1 tsp of vinegar to 1 cups of hot tap water in a separate cup (large enough to cover the eggs) for each color of dye desired.
• Add a few drops of food coloring to each glass.
• Bend some floral arranging wire as a dipper.
• Have a spoon or two handy.
• Dip/dunk eggs in colors.
• Allow to dry before handling or applying stickers.

Egg dipper

Notes:

• Have fun with mixing food coloring colors to make different colors.
• We used 5-8 drops of food coloring for our egg colors.
• To make decorations or writings on eggs, use crayons, as the wax won't wash off with the dye.
• The longer you leave the egg in the dye, the bolder the color.  We let our eggs sit in the dye for a few minutes, while we colored our next egg with crayons.
• We let the eggs dry on our cookie cooling racks.

Our fun:

Coloring on the eggs

Watching mommy demonstrate

J does his own egg dyeing

Nice bold red color

Our outcome:

J did 4 solid color eggs, I did the bunny, John did 1/2 and 1/2

Quote of the day from J: "Science!  We're doing science!  I like science!"

Happy Easter Egg making!

Getting a hard boiled egg into a bottle

This was an experiment I saw online a few years back, and I've always wanted to try it.

Q: How can you get an egg to fit into a bottle with an opening smaller than the egg?
A: Science!  Check it out!

Materials:

• Open mouth bottle - large enough for an egg to squeeze through it, but small enough to seal the top with an egg.  ***Please do not use a container that once held alcohol!***
• Matches (for adult use only)
• 1 peeled hard boiled egg*

Methods:

• Light a match (or 3 in our case).
• Carefully place match(es) into bottle.
• Cover the top with a hard boiled egg.
• Watch and note what happens

Notes:

• We used a 32 oz Gatorade bottle (note J's red juice mustache).
• We used rice as a "padding" for the fire since I was afraid that plastic burns.
• We didn't show it, but one match didn't heat up the bottle enough to do anything.  3 matches worked well.

Results:

• Video 1:

• We had so much fun, J wanted to do it again! Queue video 2:

Discussion:

• The fire from matches heats up the bottle, and having the egg on top of the bottle helps extinguish the fire.
• As the bottle cools, the air contracts, pulling the egg into the bottle.
• The trick then becomes seeing if you can get the egg back out.  We cut it up to get it out and properly recycled the bottle.
• My favorite part of the experiment was the surprise when the egg got sucked in completely.  POP!

*edited to add this note: hard boiled eggs peel better when they are a few days old (something I didn't know since I don't eat eggs).

Sensory - Hard Boiled Eggs

Easter will be J's first one with hard boiled eggs (again, I really don't like eating just eggs).  I decided to practice my egg making abilities (to which my husband said something to the extent of the whites tasting fine but the yolks were interesting...so, I guess it wasn't great?)

For science, I decided to give J a hard boiled egg to see what he'd do with it.

Here's what happened:

My goal for this experiment was to see if he:
1. Knew just by looking that this egg was different than the ones he puts in his cookies.
2. Can figure out how to peel the egg with his hands.
3. Likes the taste of a hard boiled egg.

The results:
1. Nope, he tried to crack it like any typical raw egg.
2. Nope, that was too complicated for him.  I'm barely able to do it.
3. In terms of taste, it wasn't a hit though his first response was, "I like it!" It quickly grew into, "I don't like it."

Things you can incorporate:
1. Talk about the different textures of the hard boiled egg (slimy/smooth white, gritty-like yolk)
2. Add flavor (salt/pepper/other favorite spices) - how did that change the taste?
3. Cook different style eggs and talk about the differences in cooking methods and outcomes (texture, taste, etc).

Intro to Egg Experiments

So, if you are anything like me and eggs make you gag, you can be in your late 20s and never have made hard boiled eggs (gross).  My family growing up used to make and dye hard boiled eggs for Easter, and we'd end up wasting at least a dozen hard boiled eggs (because nobody ate them).  Dying Easter eggs was a big tradition that we eventually outgrew by mid-elementary school.  I have yet to dye eggs with J.  I'm beginning to think he's old enough to where it'll be a fun tradition to start.

Anyways, so what do you do with hard boiled eggs if you don't like them (or even if you do and can spare a few)?

SCIENCE!

Stay tuned and I'll be giving you some fun ideas of science you can do with eggs.

While you're waiting, check your cookbooks and/or Google your favorite way to hard boil your eggs and get a cookin'.