The Situation:
Your sibling is at it again. It’s April 1, which can only mean one thing.... April Fool’s Day pranks. You’ve been working all day boiling eggs and getting everything together so you can spend a nice afternoon decorating eggs with your best friends. However, this year your sibling decides to be extra conniving and decides to mix up your batch of boiled eggs and raw eggs. You were really looking forward to your fun day ahead, but now you can’t figure out which eggs are which because they are the same size and color! You could simply drop each egg and see if the egg is raw or boiled, but this would destroy your eggs you were going to decorate. You’re completely at loss and are ready to really teach your brother a lesson when, suddenly, you realize science always has a solution! Continue reading and find out how you can put the joke on your brother and learn a little eggcelent physics along the way.
The Solution:
- Obtain two eggs. Label one egg “1” and the other “2.” Place the two eggs on an even ground. A table is fine for this experiment.
- Hold one end of one of the eggs with your index finger and the other end with your thumb. Gently spin the egg. Do the same with the other egg. (If you spin your eggs too vigorously, you’ll have a big mess to clean up!)
- While one of the eggs is spinning, touch it gently to make it stop spinning. Now do the same for the other egg. Record any differences you observe when you try to stop the eggs from spinning.
- Do steps 1-3 for all the remaining eggs. The eggs should divide into the two categories of what happens after they stop spinning. Organize the eggs into two batches with regards to this characteristic.
- You should have two batches of eggs. Now the question becomes: which egg is boiled and which is raw? Break one egg from each batch to reveal which batch has raw eggs and which has boiled eggs.
The Science:
The solution to this problem is actually related to physics. In physics, there is a term called center of gravity which is basically where an object’s mass is concentrated so that it would balance at this point. Because the boiled egg is solid, its center of gravity stays the same. In contrast, the raw egg is liquid, making its center of gravity continually change when spinned. Eventually, the friction of the egg shell stops the liquid from moving around. Hence, you should have observed the raw egg to keep spinning when stopped and the boiled egg to stop spinning when stopped.
Alas, you have saved your eggs from catastrophe. Your sibling will have to find another victim to prank this April Fool’s Day.
For a video presentation of this or equally cool experiments, check out the HooplaKidzLab channel on YouTube. To find out more tricks and pranks to play on your friends(or sibling) this April Fool’s Day, check out: http://kidsactivitiesblog.com/category/holiday-activities-for-kids/april-fools-day-for-kids
