Doing the cool things: Stripping an egg.

School´s not officially out, but with lots of free days, it feels a lot like it. So, other than cycling, we did a lot of cool things, too - I´ll show you.
The first, really easy and very cool one is the stripped egg. Don´t eat it. It´s a science experiment. It looks like this:

 No, we didn´t boil it. It just doesn´t have it´s shell anymore. I can put a raw egg without it´s shell on my nice tablecloth, now, that´s cool, right?

We used white vinegar, and raw eggs, time, and our hands. Food coloring is optional. (Isn´t food coloring always an option?)

So, basically, you put eggs into vinegar. Like this:

As you can see, we put foodcoloring into some of the glasses, and left others clear, and we marked our glasses, to avoid angry crying kids fighting over which egg belonged to whom. Might happen ;)

So... what happens?
Right when you put the egg into the vinegar, you can see little bubbles on the outer shell, rising to the top:

That´s carbon dioxide, forming due to the reaction of the acid with the calcium of the eggshell. You can talk about that with your kids, and then, leave the scenery. Make soap, go to the lake, something like that.

Then comes day 2:

After your egg soaked in the vinegar over night, the shell will not completely have dissolved, but it will be very soft, and you can allready squeeze your egg. This is my egg, right after I got it out off the vinegar:

And yes, Mehmet smiles like a maniac.
However, if you rub, gently, maybe sprinkle your egg with more vinegar from time to time...

 ...you can completey rub of the rest of the shell.- Or, if that doesn´t work yet, wait a little longer.

In case you press to hard, you might still break through the membrane of your egg. That´s funny, too. You´ll be left with a very soft shell, like this one:

Or if you used foodcoloring, you can get it in blue, too:

My sons really liked to play with it, and I bet it was super educative. At least I hope Eva will remember bits about the carbon-dioxide-reaction-of-acid-with-calcium part when her next test in biology/chemistry is due ;)

Of course, we didn´t come up with this on our own. You can find a detailed description and even a video of the whole process on Imagination Station.

So, this was part one of our doing cool things series - stay tuned for more tomorrow!

I´m expecting a couchsurfing lady from Califonia tonight, so I´m going to make the beds! See you :)

Music:

When I first found this arrangement of Bach´s little G minor fugue, I loved it so much that I made it part of my favourite chapter of my favourite novel :) It´s still mindblowing, and Eva and I like to sit there, with our mouths hanging open, and adoring how the melodies grow, and overlap, and how it seems so simple in the beginning, and at 30 seconds, we´re both out. Also, I like the dramatic atmosphere of the piece. Bach must have been such a drama queen... And the graphic makes the beauty of Bach´s composition even visible, so, that´s awesome, too.