Gaby's E-Portifolio: Egg Lab

In the last week we had to observe two eggs without shell in different solutions. We were divided in groups, the solutions my group chose to the eggs were Distilled Water and Alcohol. In the first day of the experiment I miss class because I was sick, but in the other two days I was there helping my group. We predicted that the eggs would get bigger and some chemical reaction would happen due to diffusion and osmosis. For three days we measured the eggs' circumference, the remaining solution and weighed the eggs. We were suppose to start with 80 milliliters of each solution, but my group started with 100 milliliters so I am not able to make an average with the other groups that used the same solutions. That is why I am doing just the tables and graphs from the information that I have from my group.

The eggs changed a lot in the three days they were in the solutions. In the first day they were ordinary eggs with no shell. In the second day the egg in Distilled Water was yellow and the other in the Alcohol was white. Although just in the third day we could see what had really happened to the eggs, as we opened them. The egg in Distilled Water was yellowish, more transparent, bigger, it popped right away as we touched the knife revealing a more liquify egg. The egg in the Alcohol was white, harder to cut and when we cut it we face with some bubbles and with a solid egg that looked like it was boiled.

In the pictures bellow we can see how the eggs looked like in the third day.

By these pictures we can perceive how diffusion and osmosis work; the eggs were the same but the solutions were different what made all the difference. The molecules of water cross the egg membrane increasing its size and making it more liquify. Also the egg exchange materials with the Distilled Water that we couldn't notice because we were measuring the egg along the process. We predicted that the egg would get bigger and that some chemical reaction would happen, the egg increased its size and changed into another substance. By seeing the egg that was in Alcohol we can notice that as the solution was different the exchange was made of different particles. The particles of alcohol that crossed the egg membrane made a chemical reaction in which the egg turned solid and with a boiled egg appearance. We can tell that diffusion and osmosis occurred by the diverse results we got from the both eggs. Also as you will see above there were changes in the circumference, mass of the eggs and volume of the solutions. There is the possibility of errors as we did these experiments in class, but we worked hard to identify any error and make the information accurate as possible.

The tables and graphs below show how the eggs changed along the process according to my group.

Volume of Distilled Water (milliliters)
Day 1 100
Day 2 82
Day 3 70

Circumference of Egg in Distilled Water (centimeters)
Day 1 15.5
Day 2 16
Day 3 17

Egg in Distilled Water Mass (grames)
Day 1 74,7
Day 2 80,9
Day 3 68,9

There is clearly an error in the egg mass, because as its circumference got bigger the mass should have got bigger too. What may have happened is that we weighted the egg in the beginning and just wrote the results at the end, what led us to forget some number.

Volume of Alcohol (milliliters)
Day 1 100
Day 2 80
Day 3 64.8