Winter in Rochester!

Winter is here!

Indoor Recreation Centers

Master list of local libraries:
Quick links to their events

Great Winter Hikes in Central/Western New York

Museums and family fun centers


How to Bully-Proof Your Child:
Practical Tips



Those wacky Webster Children's Librarians!
Stories, songs, and fingerplays on YouTube


Calendar


Science Experiment from the RMSC
An Eggs-ellent Experiment!

RMSC

Have you ever seen an egg and wondered what happens inside? Birds, reptiles and amphibians aren. t born the same way other animals are; they hatch from an egg. Here are some experiments you can do at home to learn a little more about how an egg works, and even a little about your own body too!

Equipment Needed:
3 raw eggs
12. string
3 wide mouth glasses or jars
vinegar
corn syrup or honey
water

What to Do:

Carefully soak each egg in vinegar for 2 or 3 days.

While you wait, try this warm-up experiment:

Materials Needed:
colander or strainer
2 bowls
1/2 cup dry beans
1/2 cup salt

1. Pour salt and dry beans into a bowl. Mix the contents thoroughly.

2. Hold a colander over the empty bowl and pour the salt and beans into the colander.

3. Gently shake the colander up and down several times over the bowl.

4. What do you see happen? Why do you think this happens? Keep your ideas in mind as you do the eggs experiment.

Let's go back to our eggs!

Gently rinse off each egg.

Wrap the string around the middle of the egg and cut the string. Measure the length of the string using a ruler.

Make observations about the eggs:

How do the eggs feel?

What do they look like?

Do you think anything is different?

What do you think happened?

Do you think the eggs changed inside?

Try opening one up and see!

Gently place each of the remaining two eggs in a glass or jar, filling one with clear corn syrup and the other with water, so that the eggs are completely covered (don't be surprised if an egg floats).

Let the eggs sit for 3 days. Check them each day to see if anything is happening. Predict what you think will happen.

After three days, remove the eggs and gently rinse off the corn syrup under a little water.

Measure the eggs again with the string. How does this compare to the first measurement?

What do you think happened? Do the eggs look or feel any different? Do you think anything happened to the corn syrup? What do you think is different?

Try cutting them open and see how they look and feel.

Why?

The shell of an egg is there to protect what is inside, and is a lot like our bones. Our bones and the egg shell both have calcium in them to make them strong. Vinegar removes the calcium from the eggs, so that you can see inside. What is left is called the egg's outside membrane.

All living things are made of cells. All living cells have membranes around them. One of the jobs of the membrane is to let air move from the outside of the egg to the inside of an egg. It doesn't want to let things inside, such as corn syrup, that will be bad for the baby birds, reptiles or amphibians. It does this by having tiny holes in its membrane, only large enough to allow very small things like air to enter.

Remember the warm-up experiment? Let's go back to that...

In our warm-up experiment, the colander acts as the cell membrane allowing only certain size things to pass through to the bowl. Here, the salt is small enough to pass through, but the beans are not. In the cell, water, carbon dioxide, and oxygen from the air are small enough to move through the membrane, but larger things cannot.

In our egg experiment we used water and corn syrup instead of salt and beans.

Which do you think is larger, water or corn syrup?

Why?