A neat experiment to do with your eggs:

[TreeFever]

Extra eggs laying around and some curious kids?
Try this egg-speriment:

First, take a normal, uncooked egg and set it in a dish big enough to hold the whole egg. Fill the dish with vinegar until the egg is submerged. Leave overnight.
When you wake up in the morning, the vinegar will have dissolved all the calcium of the eggshell and you will be left with an egg encased by a membrane only!
To go even furthur:
To illustrate the permeability of an egg's membrane, take your now shell-less egg and immerse it in a dish of water for another night. When you wake up, the egg can easily double in size because of the water that it has soaked up! The egg is now huge and wobbly like a water balloon!

fun stuff

the kids in my Chickens and Their Eggs class loved it

 

[shelleyb1969]

That sounds so cool!

I'm gonna try it with my son tomorrow night! Thanks!

 

[Akane]

We did it in highschool biology. You can also put the eggs in other solutions. In saltwater they will shrivel up.

 

[B. Saffles Farms]

Ill have to let my 9y/o son try that. Hes all the time wanting to do expieriments(sp).

Thanks for sharing.

 

[ginbart]

Thanks, I think we will try that tonight.

 

[#1California Chick]

Totally cool!!! Thanks for sharing your ideas!!

 

[JennsPeeps]

Sort of related, put a gummy candy (bear, worm, whatever) in water overnight. They, too, swell to double their size.

 

[BrackenFarms]

cool

 

[dancingbear]

Quote:
That makes sense, because salt attracts water. the water would move out of the egg, into the salt water.

That's why brining lean meat in very strong brine helps keep it from drying out when it's cooked. The salt in the meat keeps the moisture in the meat. But if you boil very lean meat in salty water, (when the meat hasn't been brined before cooking) the meat will become dry and stringy. The salt water draws the remaining moisture out of the meat.

Great post! Bill Nigh the Science Guy would be pleased!

 

[Jdek]

That sound like a really neat eggsperiment....
I'll have to try that out with my crowd.