🥚 Eggshells, vinegar and lemon juice: the whole packet

🥚 Eggshells, vinegar and lemon juice · 3rd–7th grade · 3 days of testing · about $3 · 30 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 14 days away

Count back from your fair day and write in each date. Fewer days than this? The jobs share days, in this order; nothing is skipped.

Dates from my teacher

• My question is due
• Testing starts
• My results table and graph are due
• My board is due

In this packet

1. 🗓️ My project plan
2. 💭 My hypothesis
3. 🧺 Change, measure, keep the same
4. 🪜 My steps
5. 📊 My results
6. 📓 My logbook
7. ✅ My conclusion
8. ✂️ Board titles to cut out
9. 🏅 The judge's questions and my certificate

If I change the liquid the egg sits in, then how soft the shell feels after three days will ________________, because _____________________________________________

What I think will happen, in my own words:

3 levels × 3 tries at each = 9 tries in all. If anything you keep the same changes, you won't know which change made the difference.

What I need

• 🥚 Eggs: 9 raw eggs, from the same box
• 🍶 White vinegar: about 3 cups
• 🍋 Lemon juice: about 3 cups
• 🚰 Water from the tap: about 3 cups
• 🥛 Clear plastic cups, all the same size: 9, big enough to hold an egg
• 🍽️ A baking tray or big plate
• 🥄 A spoon
• 🧻 Paper towels
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines

Be safe: 🧼 Wash your hands after · 🚫 Test food is not for eating

1. Stand nine clear cups on a tray, and label three each water, lemon juice and vinegar.
2. Use a spoon to lower one raw egg gently into each cup.
3. Pour in water, lemon juice or vinegar until each egg is covered.
4. Wash your hands after touching raw eggs, and never eat the eggs or drink the liquids.
5. Make a scale on paper: 0 is a hard shell, and 5 is a rubbery egg with no hard shell left.
6. Each day, look at the eggs and write down what you see, like bubbles or a rough shell.
7. On day three, lift each egg out with a spoon onto a paper towel.
8. Press each egg very gently with one finger, and give it a softness score from 0 to 5.
9. Write each score in your table, throw the eggs away and wash your hands again.
10. Find the mean score for each liquid, and draw a bar graph.

Write each number in your results table the moment you measure it.

I changed: Liquid   I measured: how soft the shell feels after three days (softness score, 0 to 5)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: liquid along the bottom, softness score, 0 to 5 up the side)

What I noticed: ______________________________________________

Write something every day you work on it, even the days you only gather things. More days? The three-page logbook prints from peabody.kids/science-fair/templates/logbook.

My hypothesis was ☐ right ☐ partly right ☐ not right.

I know because my numbers show:

What surprised me, or what might have gone wrong (7th and up):

Next time I would test:

Idea: Change a second thing: score the shells every day for a week, and draw a line for each liquid.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: what softens an eggshell fastest?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing the liquid the egg sits in would change how soft the shell feels after three days, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed the liquid the egg sits in (Plain water, Lemon juice, Vinegar) and measured how soft the shell feels after three days in softness score, 0 to 5.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept eggs of the same size from the same box and enough liquid to cover every egg the same, so only the liquid the egg sits in was different.
5. How many times did you test it? Say something like: 3 times at each of my 3 levels, and I found the middle number.
6. What did you find out? Show me in your numbers. Say something like: Look at my table: Plain water and Vinegar gave different numbers, and here's the pattern.
7. Was your hypothesis right? How do you know? Say something like: My numbers show whether I was right, partly right or not, and I can show you where.
8. Did anything go wrong, or surprise you? Say something like: One try was odd, so I did it again and wrote it in my logbook.
9. If you did it again, what would you change or test next? Say something like: I'd change a second thing: score the shells every day for a week, and draw a line for each liquid.