I got a voicemail from a friend the other day asking me if I knew how to tell a hard boiled egg from a raw egg without cracking the shell. He knew, and of course I knew (because I know everything and am the smartest woman alive), but he was with someone who didn't know. I was caught a little off guard by this. I posted a poll on my What the Bleep fan page on Facebook (Have you checked it out yet?) to find out who else knew... and everyone knew. I assumed it was this thing we all learned in 1st grade science, or maybe on 3-2-1 Contact! for those of you Gen X-ers, but apparently I was wrong. Some are still in the dark. Let me turn the light on for you.
When an egg is raw, the yolk and white are still in their liquid form. Obviously. You can shake the egg, roll it around the counter top, whatever... and the yolk and white will be able to move around inside of the shell. When you boil the egg, the white expands briefly before it finishes cooking and the cooked yolk stays put inside of the white. In their solid forms, they are stuck in place and can't move around.
If you stand a hard boiled egg up on its butt- the bigger end- and spin it like a top, it will spin for like ever. If you do the same to a raw egg, it will just wobble and fall over because the liquid insides are moving around and making the egg lose its balance. This is the trick. Just spin the egg like a top (or a dreidel, if you're Lexi) and see if it keeps spinning or if it falls. Simple as that. And if you didn't know this, I'd send an email to your school board and ask them why they never taught you the stuff you really needed to know in elementary science. Jerks.
2 comments:
I just spin it on the table. Raw = no spin. Cooked = whiz bang spinny spin.
Oh, I guess I should have gotten to the second paragraph where you say, "Spin it on the table, numb nuts".
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