In between experiments, my partner Audrey and I decided to do a spontaneous write up, as not to waste any time during the section. We flipped through one of Andrews experiment books titled, "Boom Academy", and picked to make an egg bounce! Our proposal is below.
The experiment asked us to compare an egg submerged in vinegar to one submerged in water, after seven days of sitting. We did as instructed and put the eggs in a safe spot where they could sit. We immediately noticed that as soon as the egg came into contact with the vinegar, it started to sizzle like something was dissolving. A couple days later we noticed a strange brown residue on the waters surface, clinging to the egg. We also poked the egg and felt that it was rubbery, like it was hard boiled. We realized that wasn't the case though when it was time to take the egg out of the vinegar. After washing the egg to remove a layer of brown film enclosing the egg, we saw that the egg white had become transparent! We could see straight to the yolk. The instructions had said to take a flashlight and observe what happened when the flash lighted shone on the vinegar v.s water soaked egg. The light bounced off the egg that still had a shell, and completely went through the vinegar egg, illuminating the yolk. Finally, we bounced both eggs in a sink and as expected, the egg that had been sitting in water, cracked. The other egg though, bounced surprisingly high! We played with it until we got a little too ambitious with our bouncing and it broke into several pieces.
The original questions on our proposal were, "what process made one egg bounce, that did not affect the other? ", and "what are the qualities of the bouncy egg opposed to the other one?" The observations I made about the opposing qualities of the eggs, are addressed throughout this reflection. My hypothesis for why what happened to the vinegar egg, happened, is because of calcium. I know there's calcium in eggs and I think the vinegar dissolved the calcium. After researching, I found that I was correct. To more thoroughly answer the question though, the reaction occurring here can be resembled through this equation CaCO3+ 2H+ -> Ca+2 + H2O +CO2
It means that a chemical that's in vinegar called, "acetic acid" reacts with the calcium carbonate in the egg shell and forms carbon dioxide bubbles, dissolving the shell of the egg. Below are some pictures of the experiment and its results.
The original questions on our proposal were, "what process made one egg bounce, that did not affect the other? ", and "what are the qualities of the bouncy egg opposed to the other one?" The observations I made about the opposing qualities of the eggs, are addressed throughout this reflection. My hypothesis for why what happened to the vinegar egg, happened, is because of calcium. I know there's calcium in eggs and I think the vinegar dissolved the calcium. After researching, I found that I was correct. To more thoroughly answer the question though, the reaction occurring here can be resembled through this equation CaCO3+ 2H+ -> Ca+2 + H2O +CO2
It means that a chemical that's in vinegar called, "acetic acid" reacts with the calcium carbonate in the egg shell and forms carbon dioxide bubbles, dissolving the shell of the egg. Below are some pictures of the experiment and its results.