Naked Eggs - Part 2

Ok, after the first 24 hours we had to check the eggs, dump the vinegar out and pour in fresh vinegar. Now, the reason for this is because as the acid (vinegar) dissolves the base (egg shell) it balances out and becomes neutral...thus no more action going on. We did this Friday evening. A friend was over, fellow homeschooler, and she was fascinated by the whole thing. We all touched the eggs at that point...felt "wierd" the kids decided. Also during this stage Alex asked if he could put some red food coloring into his to see what would happen. Why not? :-)

This afternoon we pulled our eggs out. Below is a picture of our 3 eggs (L-R) Alex, Morgan, Mom. The stuff you see floating around is the remains of the dissolved shell. We used brown eggs, btw.




We took out Morgan's egg first since she didn't add food coloring. Here is her egg in a bowl.


I picked it up for her and she took a picture while it was in my hand. It felt rubbery, like a bouncy ball. You can see the egg yolk slosh around when you jiggle the egg.

And here we have another view of Morgan's naked egg.

Here we have all 3 eggs out in the bowl...purple: Mom, red: Alex, yellow: Morgan

Look at how much you can squish it!! Amazing how durable the membrane of the egg is!

Poke, poke. Ohmigosh...I can't believe it doesn't rupture. LOL! Well, I was thankful that it didn't.

We put our naked eggs in a jar of regular water. We will be doing some of the other experiments with them and talking about osmosis. The kids can't wait to see their eggs shrivel up and them plump back up. :-D You really must try that yourself.

Ooh, I almost forgot. One of the things Morgan *really* wanted to do with her naked egg...cook it and see what happens! LOL! I'm not sure I'm ready to go that route...but maybe after our next experiments I'll let her try it.

In Memoriam - Marcella M. Larabie

Corey's grandmother, Morgan and Alex's great grandmother, passed away early this morning. She was a little powerhouse of a woman, sweet & tough all wrapped in one. She was a mother of 9, grandmother of 28, and great grandmother of 34. We received news a couple weeks ago that she was having some small strokes and wasn't doing well. Corey's dad called us yesterday to let us know that they were calling in Hospice. Grandma Larabie will be missed by so many. She was a wonderful woman active within her family, church, and community. Unfortunately we are unable to get up to New York right now so we've had to send our thoughts and sympathies to family.

In loving memory of Marcella M. Larabie, August 22, 1923 - September 4, 2008.
Marcella Larabie

Naked Eggs - Part 1

Today we started our science experiment...naked eggs. Sounds wonderful doesn't it. Who knew that eggs were ever *not* naked. lol A naked egg is an egg without a shell, held together only by the membrane. If you want to read more about the experiment and how it works then check out this web page. There is also a link to a page with experiments that you can do with your naked eggs.
Naked Eggs

For our experiment we each put an egg into a jar and then poured enough vinegar into the jar to cover the egg. In my jar we added red & blue food coloring to see if that will do anything to the egg when it becomes naked. :-) The kids wrote down a hypothesis after we talked about what the vinegar is, what an egg shell is made of,etc. Alex thinks the vinegar will eat the shell and the membrane and the egg goop will be floating all around in the vinegar. Morgan thinks the shell will dissolve but the membrane will remain intact. We are all interested in seeing if the egg white soaks up any of the food coloring in the 3rd jar.

We will check our eggs tomorrow afternoon and see what has happened.