Rainbow Bouncy Eggs - Emily's Science Lab

Have you ever wondered how to make green eggs and ham? Or what about purple eggs or blue eggs? Today we are learning about all of that and more with my rainbow bouncy eggs experiment. Hi everyone, I'm Emily Calandrelli, MIT engineer and host of Emily's Wonder Lab, and on my channel we learn about all things space and science. So grab some eggs and some food coloring because we're about to make eggs like you've never seen before. For this one you need vinegar, raw eggs, not hard-boiled eggs, raw eggs, a cup for each egg. You just want the cup to be large enough so that the egg can be fully submerged. Some food coloring and some spoons, one for each cup. What you want to do first is pour your vinegar and your cups. What we're going to do here is submerge our eggs. So you just need enough to really cover the egg. Put it about two-thirds the way up, something like that. That should be good. Next we are making rainbow eggs. So we are going to put our food coloring in each glass, a different color for each glass because that's going to make a different colored egg. And you can go ahead and use one of your spoons to mix them up. Now remember, these are raw eggs, so parents and adults, be careful here, right? And wash your hands after handling the egg. So what I do is I just tilt the glass ever so slightly and roll the egg in. Whoops! It can get a little messy. And do that for each egg. Careful, careful, careful. You don't want your egg to crack or it won't work. Don't break, don't break, don't break. Now take a look at your egg. Let's look at the yellow here. Do you see what's happening around your eggshell? Do you see? Those are bubbles. There are bubbles all around your eggshell. What is happening here? Well, your egg is made up of something called calcium carbonate. And in your vinegar is acetic acid. That's what vinegar is. That acetic acid is reacting with the calcium carbonate and dissolving it. We are removing our shell with the vinegar. And those bubbles you see, it's from the chemical reaction between the vinegar and the calcium carbonate. Those are carbon dioxide bubbles. And so now what you want to do is we're going to place our spoon on top of the egg because those bubbles, eventually they're going to grow a little bit bigger and water is going to seep inside our egg making it a little bit less dense and that is going to make our egg more buoyant. And it's going to float to the surface. But the trick here is you want your vinegar to completely cover your egg for 24 to 48 hours. And that will completely remove our shell. So we want to keep the spoon on top of the egg to weigh it down to make sure it completely submerges in your vinegar, removing that shell in the process. Now that those are set up, just place them on your counter somewhere where they're not going to be spilled and not going to be eaten. That would be gross. And wait 24 to 48 hours. Over the course of those 24 to 48 hours, you will see some stuff float to the top. That will be the outer shell of the egg falling off, just removing from the egg itself. So it'll look kind of gross. I'm preparing you. I'm warning you. It'll look a little gross. But this is one of my favorite science experiments. I swear it's worth the payoff. It's very, very fun. After about 48 hours, your egg will look like this. Look at this. So what you want to do is very gently take your egg out and run it underwater and use your thumb to remove the last bit of shell. You'll notice that it feels a bit sandy or a bit just like, gosh, what does this feel like? Kind of like lint almost. Part of it feels harder. Part of it feels softer. And as you do this with your thumb, the last remaining bit of shell will fall away. But you'll notice that the egg yolk and the egg whites are still intact inside the egg, but we removed the shell. So how is that possible? Well, there is an outer and inner membrane and that is holding everything together. This takes a while, but be patient because you don't want to break your little bouncy egg. And after you have fully removed your shell, it will look like this. Have you ever seen a more beautiful blue little bouncy rubber egg? Let's compare this to just a regular raw egg. It looks like it got bigger, doesn't it? But how did that happen? We removed the shell. If anything, you would think it would have gotten smaller, right? Well, you are witnessing the power of osmosis because our vinegar had a high concentration of water in it. And osmosis is when water molecules want to go through a semi-permeable membrane from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration. The vinegar was an area of high concentration of water molecules. Our membrane here, our egg membrane, is semi-permeable. That means that water molecules are small enough to be able to march right through it. And so water went from our vinegar, an area of high concentration, into, literally into, like inside our egg, which was an area of low concentration. And they kept doing that and kept doing that and kept doing that until the water concentration balanced out. And then we got a bigger, squishier bouncy egg. Repeat the process for each of your eggs. And finally, you will reveal your rainbow bouncy eggs. But the final question is, how did they turn colors, right? Well, it's the same science. Osmosis. The water moved through the semi-permeable membrane, taking the food coloring along with it. And that is how you make your rainbow bouncy eggs. And that is rainbow bouncy eggs. So this is really cool, actually. What you can see here is the egg white and the yolk. But around here, this thinner liquid here, that's the extra water that came from your vinegar into your egg. And as you can see, that water is green because we added food coloring to our vinegar. And then here's the membrane. How cool is that? Thanks for making rainbow bouncy eggs with me. If you like this one, be sure to check out my bestselling Stay Curious and Keep Exploring series for 99 more science experiments. I'm Emily Calandrelli. Subscribe for all things science and space. And remember, stay curious and keep exploring. I'll see you next time. Oh my gosh.