It can be a lot of fun celebrating holidays! Will you be celebrating Easter in just a few weeks?

If so, you may enjoy 2 simple Easter egg painting projects my daughters and I did together, which I wrote about and had published on Hands On As We Grow.

It took a little bit of trial and error to figure out exactly how we wanted to do the projects, but we had a lot of fun and the results were beautiful.

You may also enjoy doing an Easter Eggsperiment.

My daughters and I have enjoyed doing science experiments, and I think the floating egg experiment is the perfect science experiment for Easter.

“I’m a scientist…” from the book Jobs of a Preschooler.

This eggsperiment causes eggs to rise in water and float, which reminds me of Jesus rising from the dead- the reason Christians celebrate Easter to begin with.

If you would like to do an Easter Eggsperiment, gather the following supplies:

• tall clear glass
• 1 egg
• salt
• water
• spoon
• measuring cups
• measuring teaspoon

Once you have your supplies, follow these steps:

• Fill glass with 1 1/2 cups cold water.
• Put egg in glass.
• Notice what happens to the egg. It should sink to the bottom of the glass. The egg is denser than the fresh water, so it sinks. But how do you make the egg rise?

• Take the egg out of the glass.
• Add 1 tsp salt.
• Stir until dissolved.
• Put egg back in glass.
• Notice what happens to the egg. Did it rise at all?
• Follow the same steps: take egg out of glass, add 1 tsp salt, put egg back in glass, and notice what happens to the egg 1 tsp of salt at at a time until the egg is floating.

But, why does the egg float when the salt is added?

Salt water is more dense than fresh water. As you add salt, you will notice the egg will begin to rise because the water is becoming denser than the egg. The egg becomes buoyant.

You can check out this 3 1/2 minute video for kids that explains buoyancy and what makes things float for an extended explanation. (From 2:16-2:22, it does show a simple drawing of Archimedes from the back running naked.)

We decided to take the experiment further and  tried two different kinds of salt-iodized salt and regular salt- in two separate glasses.

Here are our results after adding 4 tsp of salt to each glass.

It was interesting to us that it required more to get the egg in the iodized salt to rise.  Here are our results after adding 7 tsp of salt to each glass.

Will you try this eggsperiment at home?

 

Check out these posts for more simple science fun at home:

• Simple Science: Chemical Reaction
• Simple Science: Density
• Science Experiments to Try at Home
• Simple Science: Do Molecules Move Faster in Hot Water or Cold Water