At Home Lab: Bending Turkey Bones

Be sure to save those leftover turkey or chicken bones for this fun and easy STEM experiment for kids! Help your littlest explorer transform into a mini scientist. Help them plan their science experiment, gather their ingredients and tools, make predictions and analyze the results! This is a great activity to do together during holiday break. Enjoy the exploration and the curiosity that follows!

Keep some turkey or chicken bones after Thanksgiving dinner and give them a good wash to make sure they are clean. Try bending them - will they bend like rubber or do they snap? They snap! In this experiment, you will try to make the bones bend like rubber.
Label the jars with the masking tape. Label one Water and the other Vinegar.
Fill the Water jar about ¾ filled with water and the Vinegar jar ¾ filled with vinegar.
Drop the cleaned bones inside and make a prediction - which liquid will turn the bones bendy?
Let the bones sit overnight and, in the morning, take them out and check on them. How have they changed? How have they stayed the same?
Leave the bones in their jars for about a week and check on them after 3, 5, and 7 days.

Was your prediction correct? Did you guess that the bones in the vinegar would be able to bend? Why do you think that happened?

Try this experiment with eggs as well. Eggs have lots of calcium carbonate in their shells, which will react similarly with the vinegar.
What do you think will happen to the egg if left in vinegar?
Will it become bendy, or will something else happen?

Click here to download the PDF to Bending Turkey Bones.