Egg foam

How much foam can you get from one egg?

Safe­ty pre­cau­tions

Warn­ing! Only un­der adult su­per­vi­sion.

Equip­ment

  • pump­kin-shaped can­dle­stick;
  • 25 g (1 Tbsp) bak­ing soda (sodi­um bi­car­bon­ate);
  • 75 mL (7 Tbsp) white vine­gar (acetic acid so­lu­tion);
  • food col­or­ing;
  • wood­en stick.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Sep­a­rate an egg’s white from its yolk and pour the white into a pump­kin-shaped can­dle­stick. Add bak­ing soda and stir with a wood­en stick. Mix some vine­gar and food col­or­ing and add the mix­ture to the can­dle­stick. Col­or­ful foam bursts out of the pump­kin when the mix­ture is stirred with the wood­en stick!

Process de­scrip­tion

Sodi­um bi­car­bon­ate and acetic acid re­act to form gaseous car­bon diox­ide. As it emerges, the gas is trapped by the rel­a­tive­ly thick egg white, thus froth­ing the mix­ture. You can use dif­fer­ent food col­or­ings to make foam with all sorts of dif­fer­ent col­ors!

A sim­i­lar ex­per­i­ment is in­clud­ed in the “Chem­istry of eggs” set from the MEL Chem­istry sub­scrip­tion.

Try it