It's time for another eggs-cellent Science at Home experiment from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences! I received these easy and super fun activities via email and couldn't find a link with the instructions. Therefore, I am posting them here and referencing the NCMNS, which is a wonderful and *free* place to expose your kids (and yourselves) to science.

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SCIENCE AT HOME EXPERIMENT: AN EGG-CELLENT ADVENTURE #1

Materials Needed:

2 squares of cardboard or foam board (roughly 1 foot square); 3 raw chicken eggs; A pile of books; Optional: bathroom weight scale

Experiment Instructions:

Step 1

Place one cardboard square on a table and using your knuckle make three dents equally spaced in an equilateral triangle. 6 inches apart is a good distance, but can be less.

Step 2

Place one egg in each dent. (The dents keep the eggs from rolling away.) Now place the second square of cardboard on top.

Step 3

Now carefully begin to stack books on top of the cardboard; starting with your largest, widest and heaviest books first. Stack slowly and carefully and see just how many books you can stack before the eggs crack. You will be very impressed how tall your stack becomes before the eggs crack!

Optional Step

If you have a bathroom scale, you can weigh the books (minus the final one that brought upon the crash!) and see how many pounds these three eggs supported. You're likely to find the results surprising!

What We've Learned

Eggs are naturally curved. Almost anything with a curve in its design is strengthened by this simple structural addition. 

Think of Roman arches in 2000 year old aqueducts or Inuit igloos made only from snow. Curvature imparts surprising strength.

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SCIENCE AT HOME EXPERIMENT: AN EGG-CELLENT ADVENTURE #2

Materials Needed:

1 raw chicken egg; 1 coffee mug (or similar-sized container); Household vinegar

Step 1

Place egg in mug and fill with vinegar until egg is completely submerged. Let sit for at least 24 hours.

Step 2

After 24 hours or more, remove egg from vinegar and gently rinse under the faucet using your fingers to help scrub away any remaining residue.

Note:

Be gentle as this egg no longer has a shell to protect it.

Step 3

You now have a "rubber" egg!

What We've Learned

This “rubber” egg is exactly what it looked like inside the hen before calcium carbonate was applied to create the hard shell. 

During egg laying, hens develop a special bone tissue called medullary bone which enables calcium in the chicken’s bones to make its way to the egg. The finished shell is composed mostly of calcium carbonate which dissolves easily in acid. (Vinegar is weak acid).

Carbon dioxide is a by-product of the chemical reaction taking place and is seen as numerous bubbles immediately after placing the egg in the vinegar! After about 24 hours, the shell has dissolved leaving only the interior membrane behind. 

Keep Up with our Science at Home Experiments

Did you miss last week's experiment? No worries, we've got you covered.

Check out our Science at Home experiment on water tension on the Museum's blog or download a PDF version.

Having fun? We want to see! Tag @naturalsciences on social media.

You can also visit the Museum's Science at Home page for additional resources or use the following links to

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