My other working theory relied pretty heavily on those little calcium bumps. They are almost always on the bottom, fatter end of the egg. According to my theory, these imperfections act like little stool legs, which help support the egg. Through my own experimenting I found that a smooth egg is very difficult if not impossible to stand up, but a bumpy one is actually pretty easy, once you get the hang of it. So it’s not the vastness of space and the infinite subtle timings of the Earth as it orbits the Sun that gets the egg to balance, I concluded, it’s the stubby little bumps on the end. So much for the grandeur of science.
Yet the legend persists. Science and reason are a good arsenal to have in the battle against pseudoscience, but in most cases they take a backseat to history and tradition. The egg-balancing legend has been around for a while, and is fairly well ensconced in the American psyche. I get lots of e-mail from people about standing eggs on end, especially around the middle of March, shortly before the equinox. A lot of it is from people who think I am dead wrong. Of course it’s all about the equinox, they tell me. Everyone says so. Then they tried it on the day of the equinox for themselves, and it worked! The egg stood!
Of course it did, I tell them. It’ll stand on any other day as well, which they can prove to themselves if they just try it. They haven’t followed through with their experiment, and they convince themselves they are right when the evidence isn’t all in. They rely on word of mouth for what they believe, and that isn’t a very strong chain of support. Just because someone says it’s so doesn’t make it so. Who knows from where he or she first heard it?
In this case, we can find out. Most urban legends in America like this one have origins that are lost in the murky history of repeated tellings. However, happily, this one has a traceable and very specific origin: Life magazine. As reported by renowned skeptic Martin Gardner in the May/June 1996 issue of the wonderfully rational magazine Skeptical Inquirer, the legend was born when, in the March 19, 1945 issue of Life, Annalee Jacoby wrote about a Chinese ritual. In China, the first day of spring is called Li Chun, and they reckon it to be roughly six weeks before the vernal equinox. In most countries, the equinoxes and solstices do not mark the beginning of seasons; instead, they’re actually the midpoints. Since a season is three months or twelve weeks long, these countries believe that the actual first day of spring is six weeks before the equinox.
The Chinese legend has an uncertain origin, according to Mr. Gardner, although it is propagated through old books about Chinese rituals. In 1945 a large number of people turned up in the city of Chunking to balance eggs, and it was this event that Ms. Jacoby reported to Life. Evidently, the United Press picked up the story and promptly sent it out to a large number of venues.
A legend was born.
Interestingly, Ms. Jacoby reported that balancing an egg was done on the first day of spring, yet it was never said — or else it was conveniently forgotten — that the first day of spring in China was a month and half before the first day of spring as recognized by Americans. This inconvenient fact should have put a wet blanket on the proceedings, but somehow that never slowed anything down.
In 1983 the legend got perhaps its most famous publicity. Donna Henes, a self-proclaimed “artist and ritual-maker,” gathered about a hundred people in New York City to publicly stand eggs up at the exact moment of the vernal equinox on March 20, 1983. This event was covered by the New Yorker magazine, and a story about it appeared in its April 4, 1983 issue describing how Ms. Henes handed out eggs to the onlookers, making them promise not to stand any up before the appointed time. Around 11:39 P.M. she upended an egg and announced, “Spring is here.”
“Everyone in the crowd, us included, got busy balancing eggs,” the New Yorker effused. “Honest to God, it works.” The unnamed reporter was not so convinced, however, as to swallow this line whole. Two days after the equinox, the reporter brought a dozen eggs to the same place where the ritual had occurred. For twenty minutes the reporter tried to balance the eggs but didn’t get a single one to stand on its end.
The reporter admits the failure may have been psychological. “The trouble may have been that we didn’t want the egg to balance — that we wished to see Donna Henes to be proved right.” This, despite the reporter having asked several physicists about the legend, and having all of them say they couldn’t think of why it should work. I find it ironic and faintly troubling that one of those physicists said that water swirls down the washbasin drain one way in the northern hemisphere and the other way in the southern hemisphere — this is another astronomy-based urban legend, and it is not true. (See chapter 2, “Flushed with Embarrassment,” for more on that.)
Ms. Henes went on to more balancing rituals, too. The year after the 1983 demonstration, more than 5,000 people showed up at the World Trade Center to participate in an egg balancing. Even the New York Times was duped; four years later, on March 19, 1988, they published an editorial with the headline: “It’s Spring, Go Balance an Egg.” Two days later, the Times ran a picture of people standing eggs up once again at the World Trade Center.
So this legend seems to spread easily. If the illustrious New York Times can help it along, the transmission may very well be unstoppable. Still, stoppable or not, I cannot let something like this get past me so easily. In an effort to stem the tide, just before the vernal equinox of 1998, I called a local TV station and chatted with the weatherman about egg standing. He had never heard of it, but was excited because they like to have little quizzes before the forecast, and this was a good topic for the news on the equinox. So he asked the rest of the news team, composed of two anchors and a sportscaster, if an egg could stand only on the equinox. Who do you think got it right? To my surprise, the sportscaster figured the equinox had nothing to do with it, while the two news anchors both guessed it did. It’s funny, too; the anchors never did get their eggs to stand up, while the sportscaster did. A triumph for science!
It may simply be that our common sense — something short and round like an egg can’t stand on end — and poor recall — who can remember exactly why we have seasons? — combine to reinforce the legend. Worse, it gets positive feedback from the newscasts every year. Not every TV news station is as open-minded as the one I called. Imagine the real schoolroom scene described at the beginning of this chapter. We have 30 or so kids and one harried teacher, going from student to student giving encouragement. Suddenly, a child gets an egg to stand. At the same time, 29 other kids don’t get theirs to stand. Who gets on TV? Right. It’s no fun to show the ones who didn’t get it. However, science isn’t just about showing when you’re right; it’s also about showing when you’re wrong.
A lot of my mail is also from people who did follow through. I received an e-mail from Lisa Vincent, who teaches at Mancelona Middle School in Mancelona, Michigan. She decided to test the egg myth for herself, and had her students try it on October 16, 1999, which, incidentally, is almost one year after the photos of my own test were taken (see the picture above). Not only were Ms. Vincent and her students able to balance several eggs five months before the vernal equinox but they were also able to balance the eggs on their small ends. For proof she sent me a photograph of her proud students and their eggs standing in what looks to me like an upside-down position. That is a feat I had never been able to accomplish up until then, and I must admit a tinge of professional jealousy. I had always assumed it couldn’t be done. However, after knowing it could be done, I tried even harder, and eventually managed to upend an egg on its narrow tip. It just goes to show you, even scientists need to have their world rocked on occasion.
Incidentally, Ms. Vincent told me that the eggs stood balanced that way until she decided to take them down on November 21, over a month after they were placed there. Here we have a great example of people not being willing to accept what they hear, and wanting to try it for themselves. That is the essence of science.
The essence of science is that it makes its own improvements: A theory is only as good as its next prediction. Remember my own theory about the stubby bumps supporting the eggs? Well, Ms. Vincent’s middle- school class showed me I was wrong. They balanced the eggs on their tops, and I have never seen a top of an egg that wasn’t smooth. Certainly, the bumps make it easier since I am always able to balance bumpier eggs more easily than smoother ones. But the bumps must not be critical to balancing, or else the eggs wouldn’t balance on their short ends. Clearly, these kids balanced the eggs through perseverance and strong desire. One of the beauties of science is that it improves itself, and another is that you never know where that improvement will come from. Mine came from Mancelona, Michigan.
Science is about asking, why? and, why not this way? Sometimes you need to think around the problem. For example, if the spring equinox is special, isn’t the autumnal one special, too? They are both basically the same, yet you never hear about people trying to stand eggs on end in
