'The quest for the easy peeling egg'

Saida Woolf, a 6th grader attending Valley Oaks Charter school of Tehachapi, competed against over 1,000 other students at the California State Science Fair on May 18-19 with her project entitled “The Quest for the Easy Peeling Egg”. After winning 2nd place for her grade level at Valley Oaks in Bakersfield, Saida went on to win 1st place at the Kern County Science Fair in the Zoology division, presented her project at the Buena Vista Museum of Natural History and Science’s 2015 Spectacular World of Science event, and received a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition for outstanding scholastic achievement from Congressman Kevin McCarthy.

Participating in the state Science Fair gave her an even stronger interest in pursuing a career in Science. She shared her project with the public at the California Science Center, as well as with nine judges and many more volunteers at the event.

There was a lot of public interest in her project, which she chose because of her family’s habit of bringing deviled eggs to social events. She learned about the science of eggs, and discovered that the age of an egg affects its ability to peel well. “An easy to peel egg is required for presentable deviled eggs”, Saida begins, “and my experiments have supported the idea that an egg’s age does affect how easily it peels.”

Saida’s recommendation is to choose eggs that are about 2 weeks old, or as close to the sell-by date as possible, to ensure that they will be easy to peel after hard boiling.

The best method for hard boiling an egg? Well, that’s another experiment to try!