Education:Science Projects: Make an Egg Float
The egg in the plain water sinks to the bottom because the egg is denser than the water. What will happen to an egg in salt water? What has changed?
Another
egg-speriment!
How to make an egg suddenly float.
What you need
2 glasses of
lukewarm water
0.4 cups (100 milliliters) of salt
One fresh egg
What you do
Before you perform this egg-straordinary magic trick, pour the salt into one of the glasses, and stir it until it has dissolved. Now you are ready to perform.
Gather your audience around.
Drop the egg into the unsalted water. It will sink to the bottom.
Remove the egg and look sad, pretending your experiment never works.
Now put the egg into the salt water, and you will see the egg will float.
Any ideas
as to why this happens? (Salt increases the density of the water, thus making the egg float. If you are really good, you can add just enough salt to make the egg float in the middle of the container. That takes a lot of practice and
experimentation!)
Fact: it takes about 40 minutes to hard-boil an ostrich egg.
Ecologists have discovered that hyenas are unable to crack open ostrich eggs. Their jaws are too short to grip the enormous egg!
Wow, eggs are so interesting! I need to do more research on them.See below for some more egg-citing egg-samples!
Catch Dr. Zoolittle in an entertaining show in the San Diego Zoo's Children's Zoo daily during the summer and every weekend and school holiday.
More
Science Projects: What's
the Strongest?, Spin Your Eggs, The
Egg-in-a-Bottle Trick, An Egg-sample
of Nature's Strength
Animal Bytes: Ostrich
