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Rapidly Dissolving an Egg Shell

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Iluvatar:
My situation: I am under significant pressure to think up a novel method of breaking an egg for an AP Physics egg-break project. My goal here is to investigate dissolving the shell, hopefully by getting some information from this forum. Note, this will be done in a highschool, and thus, will follow any and all possible safety precautions.

So, my questions to anyone here with knowledge of chemistry are these:

What would be the best chemical with which to dissolve a standard egg shell?
What would be the best commercially available chemical with which to dissolve a standard egg shell?
If I were to use Hydrochloric Acid, what concentration would be required to dissolve the shell relatively quickly (looking for under a minute)?
What concentration of HCL is commercially available?
Any other suggestions involving the chemical destruction of an egg shell?

Any advice/help would be much appreciated.

mike:
I would think that HCl or vinegar would be the ones to try in a high school lab. Although vinegar will probably be a bit too slow for what you are after.

Findind out how the concentration affects the dissolving of the shell could be another interesting experiment in itself. Try a dilute solution and then try more concentrated solutiosn timing how long before the egg shell dissolves.

Usually HCl is about 33% when concentrated, but I doubt you will need this concentration.

Anything acidic should dissolve the eggshell.

Good luck

ntpt:
We did an experiment involving dissolving an egg shell and vinegar absolutely didnt work, HCl did. 0.1M HCL.

billnotgatez:
I thought there was an experiment where you could put an egg in a milk bottle if you soaked it for some time (maybe overnight) in vinegar. Someone once said, “Patience is a virtue”.

Bakegaku:

--- Quote from: billnotgatez on February 21, 2006, 05:06:31 AM ---I thought there was an experiment where you could put an egg in a milk bottle if you soaked it for some time (maybe overnight) in vinegar. Someone once said, “Patience is a virtue”.

--- End quote ---

Patience is a virtue, but in this case the key word is rapidly dissolving an egg shell.  

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