Bouncing Raw Eggs?

This weeks science experiment-we decided to try this wierd thing out.
You start with an egg and you put it in a glass of white vinegar.
Then after 24 hours you come back and they look like this.
Then you either bounce them in the sink or do what Christopher did and just pour his out.They will actually bounce once or twice before it breaks but then look what happens...

Check out the shell!

It's all rubbery and very odd.

The kids thought this was amazing.

-

Why did it happen?

Eggs contain something called "calcium carbonate".

This is what makes them hard.
Vinegar is an acid known as acetic acid.
When calcium carbonate (the egg) and acetic acid (the vinegar) combine, a chemical reaction takes place and carbon dioxide (a gas) is released. This is what the bubbles are made of.
The chemical reaction keeps happening until all of the carbon in the egg is used up -- it takes about a day.
When you take the egg out of the vinegar it's soft because all of the carbon floated out of the egg in those little bubbles.

-

I was researching why it did this so that I could post about it and use the correct wording and found something interesting that I wish I would have known earlier-we might have to do it again now!

-

If you leave the soft egg out on the counter, it will harden up again!

Because the carbon left in the egg shell steals the carbon from the air that we breathe out and makes it hard again.

-

Also if you put the soft egg in water, it will absorb and expand via osmosis until it finally bursts.

-

So much you can do with vinegar and an egg besides just dying them for Easter!