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Science Experiment from the RMSC
An Eggs-ellent Experiment!
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?
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