My attempt at kitchen sink science: Faucet stream lifts egg.

An egg in a kitchen sink demonstrates the principle of aerodynamic lift.

When I was a physics major in college (an adventure that didn't end well for the physicist in me), Prof Griffioen said that if you blow down through a funnel over a ping pong ball, the ball will not fall out of the funnel. He said he never had the courage to try it in front of a classroom, but it does work and demonstrates the same principle that provides lift to airplane wings.

(Airplanes rise because the pressure above the wing is lower than that below.)

Now, I make eggs and rice for my wife for breakfast each each weekend, and one of the steps I go through is first giving them a warm bath before putting them in the pot, then a cold bath afterward before I shell them.

I noticed nearly each time that a single egg in flat-bottomed bowl settled under the stream of water I was using to fill the bowl, and there it would stay until I turned off the tap and it rolled away to the side.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to observe it, but here it is, in all its wonder: the fundamental principle of flight in my kitchen sink:

[2014-07-19]

c0