The Anatomy of a Chicken Egg

Have you ever wondered what you are eating when you eat eggs?  Well, today we found out exactly what everything is called inside an egg and what their functions consist of for a growing chick.

We broke open an egg and observed it with a magnifying glass.  After cracking an egg, one can see something somewhat gooey inside the eggshell.  This insulates the contents of the egg.  The shell is the hard outer membrane. The yolk is similar to the placenta in humans.  It provides nourishment to the developing chick.  The white spiral bands on either side of the yolk are called chalazae.  They hold the egg yolk in place.    The part of the egg that is the egg white is called the albumen.  It contains water reserves for the growing chick.

We labeled the parts of the egg as shown above.

shell = outer membrane = protection
inner gooey part of shell = inner membrane = insulation
yolk = food source for the developing chick
squizzly white bands = chalazae = holds yolk in place
egg white = albumen = water reserves for the chick

Suggested Resource for this Lesson Shown Below

Adventures with Atoms and Molecules: Do Molecules Move?

Materials Needed
Glass of Water
Food Coloring


Observations

In order to observe how molecules move through water, we used food coloring so that we could see the molecules move.





The molecules moved slowly through the water.  We waited and watched the food coloring slowly fall to the bottom then swirl and wiggle to the top and sides.


After 20 minutes, the entire glass of water became a uniform color of light blue.

Conclusions:

Molecules are so small that we can't see them, but we can see collections of molecules and observe how they move by using food coloring.  Molecules are constantly moving.  Liquid molecules move slowly and they wiggle and swirl to fill a space.

Resource Used for this Experiment:



Here's Another Great Resource:

Habitat Destruction Experiment

We wanted to find out how water becomes polluted, the methods that can be used to clean polluted water, the scale of difficulty of cleaning water after it has been polluted and if water can be cleaned completely after it has been polluted.  We started with a couple of gallons of clean, filtered water.  We added twigs, dirt, dead leaves, pebbles, olive oil, dish soap, plastic wrappers, tin foil, broken glass to simulate pollution from various sources.

Then we stirred it all up with a stick to mix it up and make it mucky like currents, waves, boats, wind do to rivers, streams, ponds and the ocean.

 

Then we attempted to clean the water.  We used a slotted spoon and a strainer and was able to get out some of the larger items, but not all of them.  We were able to get some of the suds out from the dish soap, but not all.  We were also not able to get the olive oil out and we noticed how it created a film on the surface of the water that felt heavy and well...oily.  We ended up dumping everything out and filling the tub up with fresh, clean, filtered water.  Guess what? The fresh clean water became polluted from what was left over previously.  We concluded that it is very difficult to clean up pollution and even when it rains and the Earth tries to clean its rivers, streams, oceans and when humans try to clean it up, it still isn't ever going to be as clean as before.

 

Many types of animals, marine life and other species depend upon water as a part of their habitat.  This is why it is important to keep trash and other pollutants out of the water!  We, as humans, also depend on fresh, clean water.  Even though we have sophisticated water filtration systems, our experiment proved how difficult it is to make the water clean and how impossible it is to make it completely clean.

This experiment was inspired by an experiment called "Habitat Happiness"on page 81 of  "The Kids' Wildlife Book" (shown below).  It is a wonderful experiment that gives guidelines and fosters critical thinking skills, as well as hands on learning as a way of teaching important concepts and meaningful outcomes.  It also leaves a lot of room for creativity and open ended exploration.
 

Learning Chemistry with Sun Bread

Click to find out more about this book!

Sun Bread, written and illustrated by Elisa Kleven, is a wonderful story about a village of animals that became gloomy because the sun stopped shining.  Then, a baker discovered that the simple act of baking bread that "rises and shines" could make everyone happy, including the Sun.  This story is such a magical story and it even has the recipe for Sun Bread printed on the back of the book!  This is a wonderful way to introduce the chemical reaction yeast has with sugar during the process of baking!  So, we decided to learn by "doing" and made our own Sun Bread
(see photos below). If we can do it, so can you!

Before

After

Happiness

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