Education:Science Projects: Egg-In-a-Bottle Trick

Just follow the steps and see how Dr. Zoolittle got the egg to fall into the bottle.

Here is another egg-speriment!

How do you get a shelled, hard-boiled egg into a narrow-necked bottle without damaging the egg? Whew! That sounds hard, but it isn't.

What you need

• A little cooking oil, butter, or margarine
• An eight-ounce (225-milliliter) glass baby bottle
• Two small, shelled, hard-boiled eggs
• A piece of paper, four inches long and four inches wide (ten centimeters by ten centimeters)
• Matches
• An adult to supervise

What you do

1. Put the oil, butter, or margarine around the inside of the mouth of the bottle.
2. Fold the paper to form an accordion.
3. Light one end of the paper, and drop it into the bottle.
4. Quickly place the egg onto the mouth of the bottle.
5. Presto!

What happened?

The burning paper heated the air inside the bottle. This caused the air to expand. When the paper stopped burning, the air cooled and contracted. This created a vacuum that sucked the egg into the bottle.

How do you get the egg out?

Blow one quick, hard blast of air into the bottle, and the egg will zoom out–ready to be made into egg salad. Just be ready to catch it!

Do you think that is how they get ships into bottles?

Just asking.

What is the biggest egg in the world?

The largest egg ever discovered was laid by the now extinct, flightless elephant bird. This 13- by 9.5-inch (33- by 24.1- centimeter) egg held over 2 gallons (9 liters) of liquid. That's eight times as much as an ostrich egg.

The ostrich egg is the largest egg in the world today.

The kiwi bird lays the largest egg in proportion to its body size. It would be as if a human gave birth to a 43-pound (19.5-kilogram) baby. No wonder the female lays the egg, and the male has to sit on it.

Egg sayings or egg-spressions

You egghead.
Don't egg me on.
He's a good egg.
Last one in is a rotten egg.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
She's got egg on her face.

Can you think of any more?

Catch Dr. Zoolittle in an entertaining show in the San Diego Zoo's Children's Zoo daily during the summer and every weekend and school holiday.

Egg-speriments: What's the Strongest?, Make an Egg Float, Spin Your Eggs, An Egg-sample of Nature's Strength
Animal Bytes: Kiwi, Ostrich