Bouncing Egg

I saw something online the other day about soaking an egg in a bowl of vinegar and then being able to bounce it. So I decided to try the experiment with Ashley on Day 1 of spring break. She recently did a science week in preschool and came home excited about all the experiments, so I figured she’d love doing one at home.

First I asked her if she knew what vinegar is.

“It’s kinda like soda, and it’s used for experiments.”

Then I explained that we were going to put an egg in vinegar and see what happens. I told her scientists usually start with a hypothesis (a guess of what might happen). After we talked about what a hypothesis is, I asked her what she thought would happen.

“The egg will stay in the bowl and then melt.”

So we set everything up: egg in a bowl and covered it with vinegar. After about 30 minutes (checking every 10 minutes), nothing really seemed to be happening.

I looked it up and realized we needed to put it in a covered container and keep it in the fridge for at least 24 hours. So we fixed our mistake.

The next day, 24 hours later, we took it out and couldn’t wait to see if anything had changed. I asked Ashley what she noticed and let her gently touch the egg.

“Wow! It’s squishy. It doesn’t need to be hot to melt it. It’s cold and the vinegar melted it anyway.”

We poured out the old vinegar, added fresh vinegar, and put it back into the fridge for another 24 hours.

After the next day, it was still bubbly, squishy, and kind of sinky.

On the third day, we took it out and examined it again. Ashley was loving it. The shell had basically disappeared and she said, “It feels like a bouncy ball!” So I told her to try bouncing it.

It bounced the first time… and then she bounced it a little harder and splat. The “shell” came off like a rubbery skin after sitting in vinegar for a few days.

Ashley then enjoyed playing with the yolk and, overall, making a big mess.