World Egg

A world egg or cosmic egg is a mythological motif found in the creation myths of many cultures and civilizations. Typically, the world egg is a beginning of some sort, and the universe or some primordial being comes into existence by "hatching" from the egg.

In the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, there is a myth of the world being created from the fragments of an egg laid by a diving duck on the knee of Ilmatar, goddess of the air:

One egg's lower half transformed
And became the earth below,
And its upper half transmuted
And became the sky above;
From the yolk the sun was made,
Light of day to shine upon us;
From the white the moon was formed,
Light of night to gleam above us;
All the colored brighter bits
Rose to be the stars of heaven
And the darker crumbs changed into
Clouds and cloudlets in the sky.

An egg on the top of the world

How long does it take to boil an egg on Mt Everest?

Suppose we're on top of Mt. Everest. A 50 mph (80 km/h) gale blasts the mountaintop this fine June day. We've pitched a tent, got the stove going and put a pot of water on to boil. Gradually the tent warms above freezing. Finally, the water's boiling, and I drop an egg in. How long does it take for it to boil? About 20 minutes for a soft-boiled egg.

How did I arrive at the answer? First, I looked up the temperature at which water boils at Mt. Everest's altitude: 29,035 feet (8850 m). At that altitude, water boils at 156° F (69° C). The Mt. Everest boiling water is much cooler than boiling water at sea level (212° F, 100° C) because the mountaintop air pressure is only about a third of that at sea level.

By the way, if you don't have tables handy, a good rule of thumb is that the temperature of boiling water decreases by 3.33° C for each kilometer of altitude. Or, in English units: 1.83° F for each 1000 feet of altitude. Knowing this, "people who live in Denver or who backpack in mountains now have an easy way for determining the boiling point at their elevation," says meteorologist Craig Bohren, author of What Light through Yonder Window Breaks?
Furthermore, I assumed that the initial temperature of the egg is as cold as if I had removed it from a refrigerator: 4° C. Then, I turned to Google to find the soft-boil temperature. According to the FDA code, an egg is safe for immediate consumption if I raise the egg's temperature to about 63° C for 15 seconds. This was reassuring since the temperature (69° C) at which water boils on top of Mt. Everest is greater than the necessary cooking temperature (63° C). Therefore, I can actually soft boil the egg.

Now, how long must I cook it? Bohren came up with 24 minutes, based on chemical-reaction speeds. The rate of chemical reactions doubles with every increase in temperature of 10° C — another useful rule of thumb. Boiling an egg involves chemical reactions as the egg protein cooks.

Thus, for every drop in temperature of 10° C, the speed halves and the time it takes doubles. The boiling temperature (69° C) on Mt. Everest is about 30° C lower than at sea level (100° C). Therefore, the time doubles (for the first 10° C), doubles again (four times, for the second 10° C) and doubles again (eight times, for the last 10° increment). Thus the time for boiling increases by a factor of eight.

A soft-boiled egg takes about 3 minutes to cook at sea level. Thus, Bohren predicts the soft-boiled egg will take about 24 minutes on top of Mt. Everest.

Finally, I estimated 17 minutes based on a heat-transfer formula derived by physicist Charles D.H. Williams of Exeter University in England.

But is either estimate right? Like any good scientist, I checked the predictions with an experiment. First pressing a helper into service, I gathered my apparatus: a pot for boiling water, a candy thermometer, a plastic stirring spoon, ice cubes and a couple of 57-g eggs.

We cooled the initially boiling water (93° C temperature, at my altitude) to the temperature at which water boils on Mt. Everest (69° C), put the egg in the hot water, maintained the 69° C temperature for 17 minutes and stirred the water continually to simulate the mixing associated with boiling.

When the timer dinged, we removed the egg from the hot water, and plunged it into ice water to stop the egg cooking. Then we sampled the egg. Good, but the white part of the egg was a tad runny. We repeated the experiment on a second egg, increasing the time to 20 minutes. The results: a perfect soft-boiled egg.

Both Bohren's and William's predictions are consistent with our experiment. (Wonder Quest)

Egg Size Competition

Elephant Bird Egg Fossil (Photo byAdam Blanchette).

Eggs come in the most amazing variety of colors, shapes, sizes and textures. Harvard Museum of Natural History visitors can see the basketball sized egg of the extinct Elephant Bird, (14) an ostrich egg (13), down to the hummingbird egg, barely the size of a coffee bean.

The elephant birds, which were giant ratites native to Madagascar, have been extinct since at least the 17th century.

Ovo de Colombo (2)

Sevilha

... e do Donald também!

Ovo do Mickey

Kinder

Em criança, deliciava-se quando comia um ovo Kinder, mas a humilde situação financeira da família Aveiro não permitia, muitas vezes, ao pequeno Cristiano Ronaldo ter este prazer. Hoje, o craque parece querer vingar-se de uma infância um tanto difícil e passa o dia a comer os famosos ovos de chocolate. Um vício que, se não fosse um atleta de alta competição, lhe poderia custar a forma física.

Quem com ele priva até acha graça a este hábito. “O Cristiano parece um miúdo quando vê os chocolates da Kinder. Não resiste ”, conta um familiar do craque, frisando: “Antigamente, só havia ovos, mas, hoje em dia, esta marca tem outros produtos, como barras e bolos, com que ele se delicia”.

É logo pela manhã que Cristiano Ronaldo satisfaz o seu vício. “Ele não sai de casa sem comer ou levar chocolates Kinder”, conta a mesma fonte, revelando que “dá gosto” vê-lo comer, bem como “a construir as surpresas que vêm dentro dos ovos”.Cristiano Ronaldo bem se pode dar ao luxo de ter um vício como este, pois o desgaste físico a que é submetido no futebol não deixa margem para engordas.

É sabido que o atleta, 21 anos, é contra as drogas, o álcool e o tabaco, chegando inclusivamente a proibir os amigos de acenderem um cigarro perto dele. Só os Kinder é que o tentam...“É obcecado pela saúde e, por isso, está sempre a falar no que é saudável. Incentiva toda a gente a fazer exercício físico e a ter uma alimentação correcta”, diz o mesmo familiar.

Fonte: Cristiano Ronaldo news

Egg War

The Egg War is the name given to an 1863 conflict between rival egging companies on the Farallon Islands, 25 miles off San Francisco. It was the culmination of several years of tension between the (Pacific) Egg Company, which claimed the right to collect the eggs on the islands, and several rival firms. The resulting violence claimed two lives, but left the Egg Company in sole control of the islands' eggs. Its victory was short lived; the company sold the rights to use the islands in the late 1870s and the federal government removed all egging companies from the islands in 1881.
(More, wiki)

The Omelette Show

By Julia Child

A verdadeira Kinder surprise

Panique dans un supermarché de Bruxelles sur Loing. Un enfant a été mordu au doigt par un bébé crocodile en ouvrant un œuf Kinder. Une enquête est en cours pour déterminer les responsabilités. Lire l'article.