I remember a magic trick that my older brother showed me as a kid with a raw egg. He would spin the egg, stop it, then quickly let it go and it would still keep moving. I imagined that the liquid insides of the egg where still sloshing around even though the shell temporarily stopped.
So this Easter we decided to not only find our Easter eggs but play with them too! If you add a raw egg to the fun you can set up an Earth Day demonstration to show how the Earth “wobbles” as it rotates around the sun.
What you need: two eggs (one boiled and one raw)
How do you do it:
- Mark which egg is boiled and which egg is raw (We used an Easter egg as the boiled egg)
- Make a guess as to which egg will spin faster
- Spin the eggs and observe the rotation
- Stop the raw egg mid-spin and observe what happens when you let it go
What’s the science: The raw egg is liquid-filled while the boiled egg is solid. When you spin the raw egg it still has momentum and continues to spin until the insides slow down and stop. The raw egg also demonstrates why Earth wobbles, unlike a spinning desktop globe, because the inside of Earth’s outer core and mantle are partially liquid.
For more interesting Earth Day science experiments check out
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