We put one home-grown egg, fresh from Great-Grandma's chickens, into a 1-Qt size mason jar and covered the egg with white vinegar. Within minutes bubbles formed over the surface egg as the vinegar began reacting to the calcium carbonate of the egg shell. Within 24 hours, the brown color of the egg was removed and remained on the surface of the vinegar. Within 5 days all of the egg shell had dissolved and we were left with the membrane that holds the egg within the shell. Despite having lost the outer shell, the remaining egg and membrane were larger than the egg we started out with as a result of osmosis.
"Water always moves through a membrane in the direction where there are more dissolved materials, so the water in the vinegar moves through the thin membrane into the egg because the water inside the egg has more materials dissolved in it than does the vinegar" (Janice VanCleave's "201 Awesome, Magical, Bizarre, & Incredible Experiments." 35).
The next step of the experiment called for adding the egg to corn syrup, but we didn't have any, so we thought we'd see what would happen if we covered the remaining egg with coca-cola.
After three days in the coke, it didn't look like much was going to happen. I had thought that maybe the coke would be able to dissolve more of the membrane, and it looked like that was happening through the dark liquid, but when we took the egg out, the membrane was still intact. The membrane had begun to turn into a cool golden color. The size of the egg had shrunk just a little, but it was still larger than it had been when we started.
In the end, we never had the chance to put the egg in corn syrup for the supposed reverse-osmosis effect I read would happen...Signe decided to smash the egg up. Once the innards were squeezed out, the membrane was left like a leathery remnant.
Our next experiment will be the rice experiment based on Dr. Masaru Emoto's premise that our intention and words matter. We'll see how that one goes!
