How to Make a Naked Egg

Do you know how to make a naked egg? It's super simple and a great fun science experiment for kids of all ages. A naked egg is an egg with no shell. Can you imagine such a thing? The shell dissolves in vinegar, but the membrane stays intact.

All you need is an egg and some vinegar.

Naked Eggs

What you need to make a naked egg

Raw eggs
Jar
Vinegar

How to remove the shell from an egg

Place a raw egg in a jar and cover it completely with vinegar.

Leave for 24 hours and rinse gently under cold water, carefully rubbing away the shell. If there's still some shell left, put the egg back in the vinegar and check again after a few hours.

The shell should rub off as a white powdery substance. Once you've removed the shell, you'll find the egg feels rubbery and is a bit bigger than when it had the shell. This is because some of the vinegar has moved into the egg through the membrane by a process called osmosis.

Top Tip

You can speed up the process by rinsing and changing the vinegar every 3 hours.

Why does the eggshell dissolve in vinegar?

The acid ( acetic acid in the vinegar ) reacts with calcium carbonate in the egg shell. This dissolves the eggshell, leaving just the membrane behind.

You should see bubbles appear when the egg is in the vinegar, this is carbon dioxide being released as part of the reaction.

Fun things to do with naked eggs

Bounce them! Try dropping your naked egg from different heights, starting low and then moving higher until the egg breaks.

Use your egg with no shell to learn about osmosis. The egg membrane is semipermeable, which allows water to pass through it. If you place the egg in coloured water, you'll find the egg turns the colour of the water!

More Egg Experiments

Try one of these fun Eggy experiments.

Use eggs to learn how to keep teeth healthy. The composition of egg shell is similar to teeth, so it makes a great substitute as you obviously can't experiment on your own teeth!