EQUIPMENT REQUIRED:
Just two eggs! Keep one raw and hard-boil the second.
METHOD:
This is one of the simplest eggs-periments (apologies – the pun really is powerfully irresistible…) out there. Taking one egg at a time, spin it on a flat surface. Stop the spin with your fingertip, release again, and then notice what happens to the two eggs.
RESULT:
After being released, you’ll notice the raw egg magically starts spinning again, whereas its hard-boiled brother won’t. This is because even if the rotation of the outer shell has been stopped, the fluid innards of the raw egg keep rotating and then drag against the inside of the shell to spin it up again.
A simple experiment, but it has actually been used to discover something very interesting about the planet Mercury. Mercury is a very small world and was not thought to have stayed hot enough to keep its insides fluid in the way that the Earth has a core of molten rock and iron. Scientists tested this theory in 2007 by using radar to measure the rotation of Mercury as it orbited the Sun. They were effectively running this eggs-periment on a cosmic scale, and were surprised to find that the planet doesn’t actually spin like it were solid throughout. So it turns out that the planet Mercury isn’t a hard-boiled egg after all: it has a runny yolk! |
