Making an Egg Yolk Float

Several times on this blog I've shared stories of my daughters and I doing density experiments, usually involving salt water.  It's always a test to see what floats and what sinks in water.  We've made whole eggs float and sink, but we've yet to make an egg yolk float and sink...until now!  This is an easy experiment to do and only requires a couple of glasses, a couple of eggs, and salt.

First fill up a glass of regular tap water.  Then fill up a second glass and add 5 tablespoons of salt.  Stir the salt into the water well.  Now crack open an egg and let the yolk fall into each glass.  You should see something like we saw.

The egg yolk sinks in the regular water since it is more dense than the water.  The salt water however has a greater density than the egg yolk, and therefore the egg yolk floats.  Cool!