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Can You Cook an Egg by Screaming at It?

The Action Lab did an experiment to show how the energy of sound can be converted into heat, and even cook food.

Sometimes the simplest science can be mind blowing.

Take sound waves, for example. We all know sound is a type of energy, and that energy can never be created or destroyed, only transferred. So would it be possible to take the energy from sound and transfer it into another kind? Can we crank our car stereo to go faster, power our homes with a gong, or cook an egg just by screaming at it? In this experiment video from YouTubers The Action Lab, we see exactly how sound can be transferred to heat energy and even cook a small bit of egg yolk.

A word of caution: some of the sounds can be uncomfortable to listen to, so you might want to put it on closed captioning at least through the middle section.

It may not be that easy to transfer sound energy to heat, but it is possible, as The Action Lab’s experiment shows. I wonder if that’s the true explanation for this classic internet video depicting a Turkish man yelling "meow" at an egg. Maybe he was just trying to cook it:

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