Egg in a Bottle Experiment

I’m so excited to share this neat science activity with you all today! For this experiment, you are demonstrating how air pressure works by sucking a hard-boiled egg into a bottle.

Here’s what you need for the egg in a bottle experiment:

•  A clear, empty container with a narrow top
• Very hot water
• Hard-boiled egg (peeled)

First, you will boil water. I put 4 cups of water in a Pyrex measuring cup and microwaved it for about 5 minutes. It was piping hot!

Then, you will pour the hot water into the empty container. Right afterwards, pour out the water and pop the egg on top making sure there’s no room for air to escape out of the bottle. Watch how the egg slowly gets sucked into the bottle. You’ll hear popping sounds as the plastic container gets sucked in. Then, when the egg is fully sucked in, you should hear a loud pop! It sure scared my 2 year old. Even though we did this experiment 3 times, he was startled by the noise and cried! (you’ll see this on the video below!)

Here’s what is happening in this experiment: when you change the temperature inside the bottle (making it very warm!) the pressure of the air increases. If you cool the air, the pressure decreases. So when the air in the bottle cools down, the air pressure outside the bottle pushes the egg inside the bottle. It shows the power of air pressure! Of course, this went a little over the heads of my small children, but it was a neat experiment! And we just wanted to see if this experiment really worked!

Here’s a video of our experiment!