Fun With Eggs

I've known this for some time, but thought maybe I should let you all know.  Eggs are fun!

One of my favorite parts of elementary school science is doing fun experiments with eggs!  I love doing experiments with things you already have in your house.  Science is fun!!  Say it with me, "Science is fun!!"

We are studying birds right now in science, and we have finally gotten to the part about eggs.  This has brought us to a week long adventure of egg experiments.  An egg, a little vinegar, some Karo syrup and water and, presto, you're in business.

If you've never done it before, go, right now, and put an egg (not hard-boiled) into a cup of vinegar.  Put it in your fridge and leave it there for a couple days.  I'm not going to tell you what happens because that takes all the fun out of it.  After about three days take your egg out and examine it - it's so cool!  Then put same egg in a cup with Karo syrup.  Leave it for a few days and come back and examine it.  Slightly gross, but still very cool.  Lastly, put slightly gross egg into a cup of water, leave it for a few days and check it out.  Presto, cool egg experiment.

The next experiment is one most people have done, but I like it anyway.  Take an egg between your palms (with fingers clasped) and squeeze.  How cool is that, that you can't break the egg even though you squeeze as hard as you can?  God designed those babies perfectly to be sat on by mama bird, didn't He?

Right now we have an egg sitting in our fridge in a cup of water to see if water can be absorbed through the shell of an egg.  I've never done this one before, so I'm not sure what we'll find out...

Lastly, this is my favorite, even though it really has nothing to do with eggs per se; it just uses an egg to show changes in air pressure.  Anyway, you hard boil an egg and peel it.  Than you take a carafe which has a mouth just slightly smaller than the circumference (girth) of the hard boiled egg.  You should be able to set the egg up on the mouth of the carafe without the egg falling in, but it should be fairly close  in size to the egg.

So, you take a piece of paper and light it on fire (I like experiments that involve fire!).  Quickly drop the burning paper into the carafe and quickly set the egg upright on the mouth of the carafe.  Wait.  Oh! This is so cool.....Sorry, you'll have to do the experiment to find out what happens....

Say it again - "Science is fun!"