Curiosity #25 Can you Unboil an egg?

curiousity (55)in #science • 7 years ago (edited)

Your Reaction "What?? you can't unboil an egg." But it turns out you can.

Hey Steemians, Welcome to the another episode of Curiosity. Today we are gonna explore how is it possible to unboil an egg.So, Lets get right into it.

But first, What are eggs made of?

you see , eggs are mostly made of water and proteins. The proteins are already folded up into integrate shape hold by weak chemical bonds. Thermal energy or in other words adding heat can destroys those weak bonds allowing the proteins to unfold, uncoil,unwind, and to be free. This process of boiling of egg is called "Denaturing of protein". This means the newly free proteins starts forming new bonds with their neighbor proteins. They form more and more bonds as the heat increases. They are so entangled that they form a solid mass. Which is also known as "Boiled Egg".

This entanglement may look permanent but according to the chemical idea "principle of Microscopic reversibility" which says anything that can happen like "entanglement of egg proteins" can theoretically be reversed. But adding more heat with entangle them further and cooling will freeze them. So what can we do?

So, How to unboil an egg?

Well it turns out what the thermal energy does to the egg , mechanical energy can reverse that. The trick is spinning the Egg ridiculously Fast. Here's how it works. First Scientist dissolved egg white in water with a chemical called urea. Urea acts as a lubricant that coats the proteins and helps glide them against each other. Then they spin that solution in a glass tube at the ridiculously high speed of 5000 rotations per minute. This makes the solution spread out in a thin film inside the glass tube. The key part is solution near the wall rotates faster than solution in the middle. This difference in the velocity creates a stress and repeatedly stretch and contracts protein until eventually they come back to their native shapes. By the this the glass tube stops spinning the egg whites are back to unboiled state. This process also works for all sorts of protein.