Super Fun Chemistry Egg-speriments
Welcome back, young scientists!
How about a riddle? Can you crack this one?
A box without hinges, key or lid, yet a golden treasure’s inside is hid. Can you guess what is it?
Ok, we have another one:
Breakfast or dinner I always taste great, I come from the one who wakes the town!
Any guesses?
Egg-cellent! We are indeed talking about eggs. Wondering why? Because today, we have some super cool chemistry experiments with these versatile and delicious eggs.
Some time ago, we wrote an interesting article on eggs and tried to solve the ultimate debate on “what comes first – the chicken or the egg?”. Eggs may look like an ordinary part of your world but you can learn a lot from them. Scrambled or hard-boiled, irrespective of how you like to enjoy your eggs in the morning, you can unlock the secrets of the universe with eggs or at least some science secrets with these amazing DIY experiments. Find out how you can bounce an egg without breaking it, cook it without any heat, grow a crystal on it, or even make a green omelette for Dr Seuss fans! So let’s get started and whisk through these ultimate chemistry experiments with eggs.
The first rule of Chemistry hack: Do Not Taste Your Experiments (unless mentioned otherwise).
Method
- Take a raw egg and carefully place it inside a glass or a jar
- Fill the glass with vinegar till the egg is completely submerged.
- Leave the egg in the glass for 1-3 days. You will notice tiny bubbles forming around the egg.
How will you know that your bouncy egg is ready? The egg will start to become translucent.
- Remove the egg from the glass and rinse it gently under tap water. While washing the egg, gently rub to remove the white firm shell from the egg.
- Examine the egg. You will find it rubbery and bouncy. Just make sure not to bounce it too high unless you are ready for a messy experiment.
The egg becomes rubbery and bounces due to a chemical reaction between the eggshell and the vinegar. The eggshell of a chicken egg is made of calcium carbonate and the vinegar contains acetic acid. Hence, when calcium carbonate and acetic acid react together, tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide gas form around the egg. Once the shell of the egg wears off, a thin membrane is formed covering the egg. The vinegar reacts with that membrane, making it bouncy.
Method
- Boil the egg, remove the shell, and then let it cool down.
- Place the cooled, boiled egg on top of the jar to check the size of the jar’s neck and the egg. The egg should not go inside.
- Take help from an adult to light a match and drop it inside the jar.
- Now quickly place the egg on top of the jar.
- Wait for the magic to happen as you notice the egg slowly dropping down inside the jar.
The egg moves into the jar without any contact due to the change in air pressure. At the beginning of the experiment, the air pressure inside the jar was the same as that outside the jar. Once we lit the match and placed it inside the jar, the air inside the jar heated up and started to expand. A few seconds after we placed the egg on the neck of the jar, the fire went off causing the air inside the jar to cool down and contract. When the air started to contract, the pressure inside the jar became less than the air pressure outside the jar. This gave the higher air pressure outside the jar an opportunity to push the egg into the jar.
Method
- Take the help of an adult to chop half a cup of red cabbage.
- Add half a cup of water into the cabbage and boil it in a pan for about 5-10 minutes. You will notice the water turning into a dark purple.
- Strain out the cabbage, collect the water in a cup and keep it aside.
- Carefully crack open the eggs and separate the egg whites from the yolk by carefully pouring the eggs from one half of the shell to the other over a bowl.
- Mix a little bit of cabbage water into the egg white. You will notice the change in colour of the egg whites into green or bluish-green.
- Grease a pan with some vegetable oil and let it heat up for half a minute.
- Pour the egg white mixture into the pan and set the yolks into the middle of the egg white mix.
- Voila! Your ‘Green Eggs’ are ready. Unlike the other DIYs mentioned here, you can totally taste this egg experiment.
Red cabbages contain a pigment called anthocyanin, that changes colour when it comes in contact with acids (low pH) or bases (high pH). When the cabbage juice comes in contact with an acid, it turns red in colour, and when it comes in contact with a base, it turns into bluish-green colour. Egg whites are basic in nature and hence the cabbage juice turned into a bluish-green colour. You can try out the same experiment using red cabbage and vinegar. Let us know what colour you get from that experiment.
Did you like these experiments? Do let us know which ones you would try out at home. Keep an eye out for more such chemistry experiments and fun activities this month.
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