You can turn an egg into a bouncy ball with this common household item (+ 5 experiments)

Just how versatile and amazing is vinegar! It can pickle your vegetables, clean your windows and rid your garden of any number of pests that don't particularly enjoy the pungent smell.
At the same time, lo and behold, the stuff is safe enough to drink and many people do just that in small amounts for holistic health reasons or as a standard additive to salad dressing. In fact -- this is an experiment we hope you don't have to try (and don't recommend doing by yourself) -- vinegar is simply diluted acetic acid, which has long been used as a treatment for cancer by injecting it straight into a tumor.
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Moreover, vinegar is very playful stuff and a frequent go-to ingredient for many would-be mad scientists, such as your elementary school-aged youngsters at home. Here are a couple experiments they can try:
1. Turn an egg into a bouncing ball
First, try turning an egg straight from your kitchen into a bouncing ball. Be forewarned, this experiment requires making use of one of nature's most influential ingredients, which is time. In this case, you need 24 hours for the experiment to work.
2. Vinegar plus milk equals cheese
Sure enough, vinegar curdles milk, which means it separates the proteins from the whey (which is mostly water). What's left is rudimentary cheese or maybe cheese-waiting-to-happen. Put it in a mold or dry it (or both) and you have a slightly more cheese-like cheese.
3. Vinegar plus baking soda equals lots of gasThis gassy little experiment demonstrates what happens to people who use baking soda as a cure for stomach gas: The baking soda mixes with the acid (stomach acid or vinegar -- which is mild acetic acid) and produces lots of carbon dioxide, which produces a nice, robust belch or, in turn, can blow up a balloon.
4. Turning milk into stoneHousehold Hacker offers this little experiment that turns milk into a brittle, tough material about as hard as ceramic -- very hard.
You might think twice about drinking warm milk (say in a cup of hot cocoa) while eating a vinegar-saturated pickle after watching this, but suffice it to say your body has its methods of digesting these ingredients, making it unlikely you will have trouble if you do. Still, this might give you pause that maybe you could end up with a lump of stone in your belly!
5. Vinegar plus salt water cleans copper
One of the more famous attributes of vinegar is its ability to take the varnish off of copper -- but only when mixed with salt water.
This process can be extremely fast and remarkably easy. You don't have to scrub the coin, just dip it into the solution for a half a minute or so. That should turn your dingy old pennies into shiny coins.
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