Happy First Day of Spring!

To celebrate the first day of spring, I balanced an egg during the vernal equinox which conveniently occurred at 1:32pm. (Last year it was 7:44am and in 2008 it was 1:48am). Vernal means "of or pertaining to spring" and equinox means "equal night."

While this whole egg balancing thing may be nothing new to some people, I just recently learned about it (or maybe I just started caring about it). According to Chinese legend, you can balance a raw egg on its end as a result some special gravitational pull that occurs during the equinox when the sun passes over the equator. Now, there are some skeptics out there and here's a little blurp from Urban Legends on About.com:

If you look at it skeptically, however, you have to wonder about the fact that there's an another equinox every year on the first day of autumn — how come there's no talk of balancing eggs in September? Secondly, while it's true that on both equinoxes the earth's axis is perpendicular to the sun so day and night are of equal length, there's no scientific reason to suppose that such an alignment exercises a perceptible gravitational effect on solid objects here on earth. Thirdly, if the equinox can cause this curious anomaly, why doesn't it cause others? Why don't we see people running around standing broomsticks, pencils, lollipops, and foot-long hot dogs on end? Food for thought.

With a few grains of salt

I'm not saying it can't be done — standing raw eggs on end, I mean — it certainly can, but the trick takes patience, eggs of just the right shape, a pinch of salt if all else fails, and — and this is the biggest "secret" of all, mind you — it works equally well no matter what day of the year you attempt it.

But I would just like you all to know that around 1:20 I was just messing around with the egg, getting my props ready and although I was not trying too hard, the egg did not want to balance itself. But then... at 1:32, I pretty much threw the egg up and it landed perfectly balanced on its buttush! Amazing, huh? Mom got one to balance also but when Courto came home around 4:30 she had no such luck. So perhaps there is something special about the gravitational pull at that minute that the sun passes over the equator...

Please excuse the horrendous type issues.