If I start spinning a raw egg very slowly in place, why does its angular velocity increase spontaneously? This is something I noticed the other day while cooking. It doesn't do the same thing with a hard-boiled egg, so I assume it has to do something with how the contents of the raw egg are distributed during the spinning process, but I was wondering if someone could fill in the details.
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Never seen that before, so I just tried it. Cool.
I believe that the membrane between the yolk and the white is elastic, so when you first, gently, give the egg a little angular momentum, you are only spinning the white. As the yolk catches up the effective moment of inertia drops, and conservation of momentum therefor implies a higher angular velocity.
