2010 - Kinderchicklets / How strong is an eggshell?!

[The Peregrine Chick]

Hey Kinderchicklets!

Congratulations, when you read this post it will be your LAST DAY in KINDERGARTEN!!!  Congratulations!

And you eggs-periment was wonderful and you did it all so very well.  And you learned three very important things - 1) calcium makes things very strong, 2) that eggshells are very strong and not going to be crushed by Princess or Ivy when they are incubating them and 3) that you need to make sure that you keep drinking milk because the calcium in it will keep your bones just as strong as the eggshells.  Way to go!

You also learned a fourth thing but it is a kind of sneaky lesson ... the reason that peregrines became endangered was because a chemical we used to use a long time ago to kill bugs on crops is stronger than calcium.  It is called DDT.  The peregrines get calcium from the food they eat.  The food they ate also had DDT in it and when they laid their eggs, the calcium made the eggshells strong and the DDT made it weak.  And because the DDT was stronger than the calcium, the eggshells were too thin and they broke just like your eggs-periment.  But where your eggs-periment showed that 3 eggs could hold up 6 books, the peregrine eggs couldn't hold up even one.  So lots of eggs didn't hatch or got broken before they hatched and we didn't have any peregrine chicks for a long time.  When we figured out that we only had a few peregrines left (that's what endangered means) and that the "bad guy" was DDT, we stopped using DDT and we started helping the few peregrines that were still around - and that's where I come in, I'm still helping the peregrines even though we stopped using DDT almost 30 years ago!  We do have more peregrines now and almost none of our eggs break anymore but in Manitoba the peregrine is still endangered because there are still so few birds so I have a bit more work to do. 

So I will be back next year ... and hopefully you all will be back watching Princess and Ivy next year on the FalconCam when you are in Grade 1!

Congratulations Kinderchicklets!  See you next year!
Tracy
The Peregrine Chick

[Kinderchick]

Today was the Kinderchicklets 2nd last day of school, Tracy and since we have been having alot of trouble viewing the FalconCam these past few days, we decided to try a little science experiment, to test for ourselves, the strength of a chicken's eggshell.   So here is what we did...

First, we placed 3 uncooked chicken eggs, close together, in a triangle shape, into a big ziploc bag and zipped the bag closed, very tight.
Next, we began placing heavy encyclopedia-type books on top of the eggs.
Last, can you guess how many heavy books we were able to place on top of the eggs, before the eggshells broke and the eggs went SPLAT?!  

Did you say 6?!  
You did?!
Then you are absolutely right!!!    You are so smart!

The 'chicklets want me to tell you though, Tracy, if you decide to try this experiment at home, whatever you do, make sure that your ziploc bag is zipped closed VERY tight or you might just have an enormous mess to clean up! And of course, they would NEVER, EVER try this experiment with peregrine falcon eggs, because they do know that peregrine falcons are a "species at risk" and they would never want to hurt a peregrine falcon egg!  

So today the Kinderchicklets learned that the calcium in eggshells makes eggshells very strong!   And they now know that they will never have to worry about Princess breaking her eggs, the next time she is incubating eggs!

They have also been learning that their bones have calcium in them too. So they are promising to keep on drinking milk, even when they leave for their summer holidays!  

Oh, and one more thing, Tracy, the Kinderchicklets want me to tell you that you won't be able to make pancakes with the eggs that go SPLAT, because it would be too hard to pick all of the eggshells out of the eggs!

We sure had fun today doing that science experiment!   We wanted to go "out with a bang" and we did!