Wah, Malaysians made eggs stand during solar eclipse! But how!?

So you may or may not have known that there was a solar eclipse in Malaysia about a week ago.

It was definitely a fascinating phenomenon. But what was more fascinating was that some people in Langkawi and Kuala Lumpur had the opportunity to be part of an event organised by the National Space Agency and the National Planetarium to see balancing eggs while the eclipse was in effect!

And in the words of one assistant science officer, this was possible due to the increased gravity when the earth, sun, and moon are aligned (as during an eclipse).

 

“Based on scientists’ opinion, the gravitational field between the Sun and the Earth is able to stabilise the electrons in the eggs, enabling them to stand upright.” – Assistant science officer, Siti Aminah Arbain as quoted by Free Malaysia Today

In fact, we even tried to this experiment in the office and guess what?

And prior to this, many people would have thought egg-balancing to be only possible on ‘lap chun‘ (or li chun, the egg-standing day in Chinese culture), but now it seems that it’s possible on other days as well.

Or is it?…

 

Surprise! Our eggsperiment was actually a few days after the solar eclipse

Yes, we lied. We did not attempt to balance an egg on the same day as the solar eclipse.

To be honest it wasn’t the easiest thing, especially when we decided to try it out based on demonstrations we saw on YouTube. But after like holding on to the egg so long until it felt like this writer’s energy also flow into the egg di (actually 10 min la), it finally worked la. Personally, this technique was the one that worked for us. 

 

And if you think we cheated, like we use superglue or what, we even recorded a video.

It may look like our editor is being a jerk, but he made the egg fall on purpose just so ugaiz can see that it really was standing, and it really could fall. But why bother going through all the trouble right?

So after we read about the egg-balancing event, we were so fascinated that we went to find out more. But what we ended up finding out that articles like this, this, and this, actually dispelling the myth that you can only balance eggs during certain days of the year. For example, this writer talks about how a school teacher conducted an experiment with her students in October 1999.

“Not only did they get eggs to balance, but they got them to balance on their short ends! Note that the eggs are indeed standing on their short ends. Incidentally, Ms. Vincent told me the eggs remained standing for over a month. Usually a random vibration would knock an egg over, but in the image it looks to me like they were standing on a standard high school chemistry class work table and sink, which are designed to be very sturdy. That was a good choice!” – Phil Plait, on astrosociety.org

As for the theory involving the increased gravity, this article discusses how there are changes in weight during a solar eclipse, but the changes are so minimal that they “make no difference in any measurable way.”

And just for additional info, it seems that you can make just about ANYTHING stand if you had the proper technique, like this guy who can balance egg la, laptop la, scooter la. 

But if eggs (and many other things) can be balanced on any day of the year….does that mean….

 

OMG did the National Space Agency and National Planetarium get it wrong???

And that’s the real issue here isn’t it?

We tried contacting both the National Space Agency and the National Planetarium to explain why they had made such statements. But at time of writing, we were still waiting for them to give us a response.

To be fair, the itinerary for the solar eclipse event listed on the ANGKASA’s website DOES NOT mention anything about an egg-balancing session, so it’s possible that there could be things that we do not yet completely know about the whole scenario. But regardless of what happened, an assistant science officer was quoted, and it kinda ends up raising a lot of questions regarding the quality of scientists in this country.

Just a few days ago, we published an article about how we are severely lacking in scientists here in Malaysia, and the reason for that was because we weren’t producing enough science students, and the ones that we had would rather find jobs overseas. And science is a problem in our country. Last year, our science and maths was ranked 52nd out of 76 countries, and that really isn’t hard to believe with instances like the egg-standing event and a TV host saying that cows’ milk will make babies absorb cow’s DNA.

But we also should be aware that hope is not lost! Articles like this and this discuss in detail how science (among other education related things) can be improved in Malaysia. Some groups like the Penang Science Cluster and EduSpec  have even already started to do something about the situation.

“We want to inspire and spark interest in learning STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics).” – Wei Sheng from the Penang Science Cluster

Heck even many parents themselves realise that science is something that should be taken seriously. And as long as Malaysians continue to realise how important science is to our country, we can bounce back from even something as disappointing as the whole egg-standing demonstration.