Science project how much salt to float an egg

However, if you add enough salt the egg will float back up to the surface. Adding salt to water increases the density of the water, because the salt increases the mass of the water without changing the volume. The bowl or cooking pot must be able to hold 5 cups. Take five eggs out of the refrigerator, and label the eggs using permanent marker from , then leave them in a safe spot to warm to room temperature.

Take 1 cup os salt dissolved in 5 cups of water. What does this tell you about the density of the egg? Extra: Repeat this activity using several more eggs, possibly both hardboiled eggs and uncooked eggs. Do you get the same results with other eggs, or is there some variation between different eggs? For testing hardboiled vs. Extra: Find out how much salt there is in sea water. From the results of your activity, do you think an egg would float or sink in sea water? Did the egg float in cup one and two, but not in cup three, four or five?

You likely saw that the egg floated best in cup one, floated a little less in cup two but still had part of the egg above the water level , and did not float in the other cups. The concentrations of the salt solutions in cups two to four were halved as you increased in cup number; for example, the concentration of the salt in cup two was half that of cup one, and the concentration of the salt in cup three was half that of cup two.

Cup five had plain tap water. The egg should have sank in cups three, four and five because the density of the egg was higher than the density of the solutions or plain tap water in those cups. Cups one and two had more salt in them than the other cups with cup one having the most salt , which means these solutions were denser. The egg should have floated with part of it above the water level in these two cups because the solutions were denser than the egg.

The actual density of the egg is in between the density of the solution in cup three and the solution in cup two. Curious about the science?

Post your question for our scientists. Menu Science Projects. Project Guides. View Site Map. Science Projects. Grade Levels. Physical Science. Earth and Environmental Science. Behavioral and Social Science. Key Concepts. Density, mass, volume, concentration, buoyancy, water. This activity is not recommended for use as a science fair project. It has to do with the density of the objects compared with the density of the water surrounding them.

If an object is less dense than the water around it, it will float. Because salt water is denser than freshwater, some things float more easily in the ocean—or extremely salty bodies of the water, such as the Dead Sea.

You can make your own dense water by adding salt to tap water. In fact, if you add enough salt, you can make the water so dense that an egg will actually float in it! Explore how this works in this science activity. Background If you put an egg in a cup of tap water, it will sink to the bottom.

Why is this? Because the density of the egg is higher than the density of tap water, so it sinks. Density is the mass of a material per unit volume. For example, the density of freshwater under standard conditions is approximately one gram per cubic centimeter. But, if you add enough salt to the water, the egg will actually float back up to the surface!

Adding salt to the water increases the density of the solution because the salt increases the mass without changing the volume very much. When enough salt is added to the water, the saltwater solution's density becomes higher than the egg's, so the egg will then float! The ability of something, like the egg, to float in water or some other liquid is known as buoyancy.