Dissolving & Bouncing Egg Experiment

The Experiment

Looking for a FUN experiment to do with the kids? Maybe you can try this egg-xperiment!

We found it at Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas and thought we’d share it with you.

What You Need:

  • Eggs (we used raw eggs – 2 brown & 2 white)
  • Vinegar
  • Water
  • Clear cups

What To Do:

  1. Set up 4 clear cups
  2. Put 1 egg into each cup
  3. Add vinegar to one of the cups with a white egg in it, and to one with a brown egg in it
  4. Add water to the other 2 cups – eggs should be covered completely by each liquid.
  5. Observe

What You’ll See

Day 1:

On Day 3:

Day 7:

Find out what happens during the BOUNCE TEST at the Mom to 2 Posh Lil Diva’s website!

What’s the science behind this?

Per Steve Spangler –

The bubbles you see forming on the shell are carbon dioxide (CO2). Vinegar is an acid called acetic acid (CH3COOH), and white vinegar from the grocery store is usually about 4% acetic acid and 96% water. Eggshells are made up of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). The acetic acid in the vinegar reacts with the calcium carbonate in the eggshell to make calcium acetate plus water and car- bon dioxide bubbles that you see on the surface of the shell.

The egg gets a little bigger after soaking in the vinegar because some of the water in the vinegar solution traveled through the egg’s membrane in an effort to equalize the concentration of water on both sides of the membrane. This flow of water through a semipermeable membrane is called osmosis. (If you take your naked egg and place it in a glass filled with corn syrup, the egg will shrivel. Since corn syrup has a lower concentration of water than an egg does, the water in the egg will move through the membrane and into the corn syrup to equalize the water concentration levels on both sides.)

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