Newton's First Law - With an Egg

In a previous post on Newton's First Law my kids and I made a penny fall straight down into a pill bottle.  Check out the link for the full details.  In this experiment, we've upped the ante a bit by replacing the penny with an egg.  Now there's more pressure to do it right the first time or be faced with a mess.  We found this experiment on Steve Spangler's website.  The idea is the same as the penny drop.  The egg is initially at rest as you can see from the picture below.

The egg is sitting on an empty roll of toilet paper, which is sitting on a plate, which is sitting on a glass of colored water.  If the plate is yanked hard enough, the egg will remain motionless in the horizontal direction, and drop vertically straight into the water.  Let's find out if we were successful.

As you can see, the experiment worked as advertised!  We did this several times, although when my two year old did it, she didn't pull the plate fast enough and the egg moved just enough to strike the lip of the cup and break.  Oh well, it's the failures in science that help us learn the truth!