Recently, I made a rubber, or "naked" egg. It's so cool and weird-feeling! And really easy to make, too. All you need is a large egg, a tall glass, enough vinegar to cover the egg, plastic wrap to cover the top of the glass, and if you want, a rubber band to hold the wrap in place.
Oh! And I forgot something. You also need a lot of patience.
That's right. Patience. Because the egg has to sit in the vinegar for one week.
Anyway, here are the instructions! (Adapted from Naked Eggs and Flying Potatoes, by Steve Spangler.)
1. Place egg in a tall glass and cover with vinegar.
2. Look closely at the egg. Are there bubbles forming on the shell?
3. Leave the egg in the vinegar for twenty-four (24) hours.
4. When twenty-four (24) hours are up, carefully change the vinegar. A good way to do this is gently place the egg in a spare bowl, and dump the vinegar down the drain.
Then, cover the egg with fresh vinegar. Put the egg in a safe place and don't disturb it for one (1) week. Make sure to pay attention to the bubbles forming on the shell, or what's left of it. (Note: if brown gunk appears in the vinegar after a few days, it's perfectly normal.)
5. One week later, pour off the vinegar and rinse the egg with water. The egg looks translucent because you stripped away its outer shell. All that remains is the membrane and the yolk inside. Congratulations! You've successfully made a shell-free egg. Feels weird, right?
A last note: readers, DON'T EAT THE EGG. It still has raw stuff inside.
Oh, I almost forgot! Here are some pics of it.
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| Top view of the egg in Day Something |
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| Side view of egg in Day Something |
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| Finished product |
P.S. I named my egg. She's Elena.
Wow, that's so neat! It looks sort of prehistoric, like something you would see in an exhibit at a science or natural history museum. When you poke it, is it squishy?
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, totally squishy. It's also much bigger than a normal egg, and is wet when I pick it up too. I forget how that works, though.
DeleteThat's a neat project. I think you can do something similar with a chicken bone soaked in vinegar for a few days. The acidic vinegar leaches out the calcium from the bone, rendering it soft and squishy like your egg. ---HT
ReplyDeletecool! i love this experiment!
ReplyDeletequestion: why one week? when we did this, it only took overnight to dissolve the shell. i wonder what was different.
follow-up: do you know what happens when you submerge your naked egg in different liquids and solutions? it's pretty neat to see: http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/eggs/activity-nakedexperiment.html