As eggs-periments go, making it possible so that a fresh egg floats in a glass of water is a well-known scientific test performed by school children across the globe. It is also a phenomenon that fledgling magicians have been taking advantage of for many years; by adding the salt or ‘magic powder’, the terminology of course, dependent on your respective audience, to plain water before or after the egg has been submerged, you will be able to perform this pseudo-miracle with great aplomb. The reason that this experiment works so well, as you’d expect, owes more to the weight of the egg in relation to the water rather than any esoteric incantations or fairy dust used. The density of salt water is simply slightly heavier than the density of an uncooked egg, so in adding salt to normal water, the salt particles increase the weight of the water. A raw egg is only slightly denser than that of plain water so with salt particles added, it makes the water a little heavier than the egg itself which produces the egg’s buoyancy. If using a Baumé scale; invented to measure the density of liquids, by the French pharmacist Antoine Baumé in 1768, a ratio of eight and one-third to nine parts of salt in 100 will be sufficient to create the desired outcome. In layman’s terms though, simply introducing around three or four tablespoons of table salt to approximately one and a half cups of water should be enough to successfully make the egg float. The substitution of sugar in exchange for salt will also enable an egg to float sans-water wings, in a glass of water, but perhaps you’d like to try the experiment for yourself and see how many parts sugar to water it takes to eventually create the same effect?
