Wow, this was LOTS of fun!! We came across the naked egg experiment on this blog recently and decided to have a go ourselves. It’s very simple – all you need is an egg, a container and white vinegar (and a small dose of patience ;-).
Place the egg in a large container of white vinegar and watch as it initially spins and fizzes in the liquid. Everyday thereafter, the children checked on the egg and noticed more and more of the shell coming from the egg. Eventually after about 5 days of waiting, we removed the egg from the somewhat gunky liquid and gave it a wipe.
Voilà! Our naked egg! The children had a wonderful time handling the naked egg. Beware, however, as it is very fragile as we discovered when Miss 4 got a little enthusiastic in her handling of the egg.
We compared the size of a fresh egg versus the size of the naked egg – noticing that the naked egg had absorbed some of the liquid and had thus increased significantly in size. We weighed both eggs individually to see the difference and discovered that the naked egg had almost doubled in weight. The naked egg weighed around 100g whereas the fresh one weighed 60g. **Tip** weigh the egg before you start the experiment (unlike us!) for an accurate comparison.
Check out the original blog post for a more detailed explanation of what is happening to the egg in scientific terms.
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