Discover osmosis through this super fun experiment
What happens when an egg is dropped? The shell breaks and the stuff inside spills out in a big mess. What if the egg rolled around intact with a soft, squishy shell? If that sounds weird but fun, this experiment is for you and your kids.
What is needed for this experiment?
This experiment needs some easily available household objects:
- A small jar or a large glass / coffee mug
- Food colouring - any colour you like will do
- 1 tea cup full of vinegar
- 2 or 3 eggs, not more than that please
- Regular kitchen knife
Also keep your mobile camera ready to photograph stages of this experiment.
How to do the experiment?
The steps are very simple, so even the kids can do it.
- Pour 1 cup of vinegar in the container or jar.
- Add 10 drops of food colouring of your choice
- Carefully place the raw eggs inside the coloured vinegar in the jar. Make sure the eggs are completely submerged in vinegar.
- This is the most difficult step. You have to keep the jar in a cool, dry place, preferably on the shelf of a cupboard or a sheltered corner of a table – and not disturb it for the next 2 to 3 days – i.e., 48 to 72 hours. No matter how much the kids bug you, don’t take the eggs out!
- You will now see a thin film on the surface of the vinegar. If you have rubber gloves, wear them and fish out the eggs. If you don’t have gloves, just take the jar to the kitchen sink and tip it carefully, so that the liquid spills out and you get the eggs. Throw away the liquid, the kids just shouldn’t splash vinegar around
- Rinse the eggs thoroughly
- Drop them. They won’t break, but bounce around like jelly. You can do a video of this while your kids keep dropping and rolling eggs around
- Once they are done, cut the eggs open with the knife. You will notice that the yolk is still intact and yellow, not the colour of the rest of the egg
What can be learnt from the experiment?
The vinegar soaked through the hard shell of the egg by a process called osmosis. But while the shell reacted to vinegar, the thin membrane covering the yolk remained intact, and the protein content prevented the colour from seeping in! This membrane is rubbery, so the egg bounced when dropped.
Concepts learnt from the experiment
Here are some concepts your kid can pick up from this experiment:
- Calcium: A mineral found in foods, specifically dairy and fish, that gets stored as a component of human bones and teeth
- Membrane: A thin flexible layer around the cells of all living things that protects and borders the inside of cells
- Osmosis: The movement of a liquid through a membrane to balance the amounts on both sides of the membrane
- Protein: A building block of the body; a nutrient that builds, maintains, and replaces tissues