Flash Movie Topic

I am pretty sure that I am going to do my Flash animation on "How to Fry an Egg on the Sidewalk." Here are the instructions for how from "The Daring Book for Girls."

If you've lived any amount of time in a very warm place, no doubt you've heard the weatherperson describe the summer temperatures as "so hot you could fry an egg on the sidewalk." That sounds very hot indeed. But is it really possible for the ground to be so hot a person could use it to cook breakfast?

We will be frank with you: the answer, sadly, is no. Unless you live on the lip of a bubbling volcano, chances are that even though it feels so hot you could fry an egg, it's actually not quite hot enough.

A raw egg is a liquid, and when we cook it, it becomes a solid. But the egg has to reach anywhere from 144 F to 158 F before that can happen. Even if you were on a sidewalk in Death Valley or Libya where the highest temperature on Earth was recorded at 136 F in 1922, the ground still wouldn't be as hot as a frying pan.

But there are a few tricks and tips that can make sidewalk egg-frying interesting, if not exactly edible. So, just on the off-chance you are reading this on the hottest day on the year in the hottest place on earth, we present you some tips on how to fry an egg on the sidewalk.

You Will Need:
A hot day (100 F or warmer)
A piece of tin foil, about the size of a frying pan
One egg
A hot sidewalk or blacktop

What To Do:
1. Make sure you are in an area where the sun is shining directly on you, and that the sidewalk or blacktop is pedestrian-free.
2. Lay down your tin foil, shiny side up, and fold up the edges a few inches all the way around, both to keep the egg from running out and help redirect some of that sunlight.
3. Crack the egg onto the foil
4. Wait.

How It Works (or Doesn't)
Since the pavement itself isn't quite as hot as a stovetop, and since the coolness of the egg itself lowers the temperature of the sidewalk it's on, it is impossible to generate enough heat to really fry an egg to breakfast standards without a little extra help.

However, using a playground blacktop or the dark asphalt surface of a parking lot can heat things up a bit. Also, using tinfoil, which not only conducts heat but reflects it, helps to capture and redirect the heat coming from the sun back into the egg itself. A well-placed magnifying glass or mirror can also harness the sun's solar energy to cook the egg.

Bonus Tip
If you are doing this experiment in your driveway and your parents' car is nearby, soaking up the sun, you might have another super-hot surface on hand that's much better suited to egg-frying. The hood, being metal, is a much better conductor of heat. So, if mom or dad says it's okay, get another egg, another good-sized piece of tin foil, and try the experiment again, this time on the hood of a car.

Bonus Warning
There is a find line between daring and reckless, and we would be remiss if we did not remind you that you should NOT eat the results of your egg-on-sidewalk experiment. But if you have your appetite whetted by this particular foray into science, you can always head on back inside and make some eggs the old-fashioned way-cooked, fully through, in a frying pan.

Did You Know?
Every year on the Forth of July, the city of Oatman, Arizona, holds a Solar Egg Frying Contest where the contestants have fifteen minutes to try to fry an egg using the sun power.