While I was looking for the science experiment about Bending Chicken Bones, I came across this Naked Egg Science Experiment from Imagination Station as well. Though we have done it before, the boys were really quite young and probably don’t remember doing it, so we did it again.
What you need:
a jar or cup
vinegar
egg
What you do:
Place the egg into the jar and cover with vinegar
Look closely at the egg and see what is happening
Let the egg sit for around 24 hours and then replace the vinegar
Put the jar in a safe place and let the egg sit for around 1 week
When the week is up, carefully rinse the egg with water
You now have a naked egg! (An egg without a shell)
The egg after it had been in the vinegar for two days.
A normal egg on the left and the naked egg on the right!
How does it work?
The vinegar, which is a mild acid, reacts with the calcium carbonate in the shell of the egg causing it to break up into two parts: calcium and carbonate. The calcium is what you see floating around in the vinegar and the carbonate reacts to form the carbon dioxide bubbles that you see.
Some of the vinegar does sneak into the egg, so it will look a bit bigger. This is called osmosis.
Note: Our little boy asked if this egg is okay to eat. I recommend that you DO NOT eat this egg! It could make you very sick.
I have a Science Experiment Activity Sheet if you wish to write up this science experiment. You can download it for free by clicking the link below.
To take this experiment one step further, we then placed the egg in a jar and covered it with water. This time we added a few drops of red food colouring to the water.
After a couple of days, we checked the egg again. This time it was a lot bigger and redder.
Then we thought we would open it and see if the red food colouring seeped in at all.
As soon as I put a knife into the egg, it exploded (Good thing I did this is a bowl!) and this was the mess we were left with. All the white had turned red! The boys were amazed!