Tuesday, February 19, 2008

don't do this at home

sometime last week, one of my roommates and i got into a heated discussion on eggs. he said putting an egg in vinegar would dissolve the shell and i said putting an egg in vinegar with some food coloring would make an easter egg. turns out we were both right, but we had decided to conduct an experiment to show that the eggshell would in fact dissolve. we got a small cup, poured in a bunch of vinegar, added an egg, covered in saran wrap and let it incubate for a few days on the kitchen counter. during the course of our experiment, the egg began to appear bloated, a strange looking sticky goo started appearing on the sides of the glass and the plastic wrap began to bulge.

we decided to end the experiment this evening for fear that something odd was going and we were creating some sort of biohazard. my roommate removed the plastic wrap and poured the vinegar into the sink and touched the egg. the shell had basically dissolved but touching the egg was like touching a hard boiled egg. so we started tossing it back and forth, because...well, why not? so we start moving further away from each other until we're standing across the dining room from each other throwing our science experiment back and forth. i start laughing a little too hard and forget to cradle the egg as it heads my way. the egg lands in my hand and explodes. turns out that although it felt like a hard boiled egg, it wasn't. in fact, it was still raw. but the innards of the egg landed on the floor in perfect sunnyside up fashion. if our floor had been a stove, it would have been brilliant and breakfast would have been ready in a few minutes. instead, we had raw egg on the floor, all over my jeans and hands...and then my jacket fell off the table onto the raw egg for good measure. i wish we'd gotten it all on film.

recommendation: don't throw eggs in the house, especially if you don't know whether or not they are cooked.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Trish, regarding our egg-xperiment, it is very difficult to put bunch of vinegar into "a small cup", especially with an egg already in. The scientific point (I was afraid we did not have enough vinegar): the volume of vinegar about twice the volume of the egg suffices for 95+% shell removal. BTW, the egg with shell removed makes a great bouncing ball - except it does not come back up if you drop it from more than a few inches.
I think the Guinness book of records says something over 70m (200+ft) for an egg toss - we still have a bit more practicing to do. I am sure though, that they do practice outside.

Unknown said...

World Egg Throwing Federation:
http://swatonvintageday.sslpowered.com/index.html
Let's train for next year's championship!