Sep 22, 2005
Science Fair Projects - Egg in a Bottle
The University of Illinois provides visitors to its website with various science fair projects, including the perennial favourite - “Can air pressure alone cause an egg to be pushed into a bottle?”. Of course, it can. To make it work you’ll need an egg, a bottle, and a couple of matches. It’s all to do with air pressure differences.
But, the procedure Illinois suggests students to follow begins with “Step 1 - Peel the shells off the eggs”.
Not until further down the page (below the fold in fact) does it mention a crucial preparatory step. Can you guess what it is? Or, would you end up with egg on your face, and all over your hands?
You can watch a video of this kind of egg in a bottle experiment here.




Nature Reviews Drug Discovery
Alicia Roses said,
February 21, 2006 at 10:37 pm
Hi, I have a question for you. My question to you is What kind of project should I do for my asthma project?
Please respond. Thankyou for your time and effort
Alicia Roses
sciencebase said,
February 21, 2006 at 10:42 pm
Hi Alicia
Is this a school science project, college or university level?
You might want to take a look at our asthma e-book for information on a specific approaching to dealing with asthma symptoms, called the Buteyko technique, which might inspire you.
db
jc said,
April 25, 2007 at 3:25 pm
are you supposed to boil it?
David Bradley said,
April 25, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Yes, indeed, you surely have to use a hard-boiled egg.
Emily Grimm said,
May 11, 2007 at 1:45 am
Hello,
I did this project for my 6th grade science fair and it is indeed what gave me so much success.
What made me want to do it is an episode in the show Full House on channel 48.
It is a really great thing to do!
Lizzy
kbreezy11$$ said,
May 14, 2007 at 9:33 pm
i did the egg in a bottle and i got a horrible grade and am wondering what went wrong???????????
David Bradley said,
May 15, 2007 at 8:49 am
Sorry to hear that “kbreezy11$$”. What indeed, went wrong? It’s a fairly straightforward experiment. Did you do the full hypothesis, experiment, conclusion business? Was it nicely written up? Was your bottle clean? Did you hard boil and peel your egg? Lots of things could go wrong. Maybe your teachers wanted something more sophisticated…
The Bad Angel said,
October 12, 2007 at 2:07 am
I did this project and everything went right …and I got a high grade
David Bradley said,
October 12, 2007 at 7:56 am
Well done Bad Angel!
allena said,
October 23, 2007 at 10:32 pm
where are the evolution questions?
David Bradley said,
October 24, 2007 at 8:32 am
Allena, I corrected your spelling of evolution (forgive me if evalution should have been corrected to evaluation, however). I don’t currently have any evolution or genetics science fair projects on the site, but there are plenty of resources elsewhere on the web. Just use the correct spelling of evolution in Google ;-)
danny said,
October 27, 2007 at 4:56 pm
can the egg in a bottle experiment be for 7th grade?? please some1 answer
David Bradley said,
October 28, 2007 at 10:21 am
Danny, I don’t see why not. But, why not just ask your teacher to double check?
Konan said,
November 8, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Hello,
I have a question, would this project be for 8th graders too?
amber rose said,
February 23, 2008 at 8:12 pm
i bet it can be for your grade to but try asking your teacher to …..
Brenda said,
April 2, 2008 at 5:29 pm
I want to know, if you put an egg in water will it float or will it sink?
David Bradley said,
April 2, 2008 at 5:45 pm
@Brenda - did you boil your egg already? A bad egg boiled will float because of the production of hydrogen sulfide gas within. A fresh egg shouldn’t float, although there may be a build up of gas inside even a good egg. More info here
db
aldriana givens said,
April 7, 2008 at 8:27 pm
i really like this project this is ma second time doing this and I got a A+ on both of them and im proud…thankyou