My daughter is doing a science project on egg flotation. How do we do the experiment? Boiled eggs?

Answer 1

NO! you want the eggs to float not sink! you have to cook the egg, and then put it back in the eggshell and tape it together.

Answer 2

Regular eggs will do, boiled eggs would probably work as well. Try putting a teaspoon of salt into room temperature water. stir until disolved. Place egg in water. Repeat by adding 1 additional teaspoon of salt at a time. Place egg back in water. Repeat until
as some point the egg will slowly start to float up to the top of the water. Watch it float. Be amazed.

It's possible that you may need/want to heat the water a little bit, to help disolve more salt more easily. But with a young child as an independent experiment I'd leave the heating out of the picture if possible.

The reason is because the salt in the water increases it's overall density. Relative to the egg the density will have gone up. Since the egg is just a little bit more dense than the water, adding just a relatively little amount of salt - will allow the egg to float.

Answer 3

CAUTION, be very careful with this experiment! Take one egg from the refrigerator and place it somewhere safe where it won't accidentally get broken for say a week. It might be worthwhile to put some identifying mark on the egg that we allow to spoil.
Then you run a deep pan full of water and put one spoiled egg and one fresh egg in the water and you will see that one sinks to the bottom while the other floats.
Now, after the experiment, you have a problem. What to do with a rotten egg! That is your problem.

Answer 4

old eggs float, because they shrink inside. How much time do you have? Can you let eggs sit out for various numbers of days and show how each floats differently?

Perhaps compare a flotation for fresh eggs, boiled eggs, eggs dried in oven, eggs that sat out X number of days.. PS DO NOT put in microwave.

Answer 5

Hmmmm..not sure....try to log on to ultimateadsite.com.....hope they will find a solution......