I’m doing something. Something like Biology… Something like what we or most of us have learnt in biology this semester. But it isn’t the same thing… because it was all done by me.
Well I’ve always wondered why apples turn brown. People use lemons, milk and all kinds of stuff they find in the markets to stop that (as usual). And I think that they are effective. But how much? And I am actually I’m testing two things in this test.
One: How good the substance is at preventing the browning for short period of time.
Two: How good as a preservative.
They ask us not to cut open fruits and leave them uncovered for a long time. If you bite and… talk and talk with someone and look at your apple once again what do you see? I thought the saliva can somehow slow down the browning (sounds stupid but interesting).
So these are the substances I tested… Dilute Vinegar (Classic preservative), Dilute Honey (Sweet thing and often added in fruit juices), Sugar syrup (Sweet thing again), Salt water (Classic preservative), Dilute Soy sauce (Something like salt?), Dilute Milk, Dilute Soymilk (I prefer this one’s smell to milk), Pure water (of course), Dilute Saliva (Mine…), Dilute Lemon juice (Classic preservative), Oil… Can’t be dilute (Classic preservative?) and one test tube with nothing but air. So 12 things to be tested…
Stuffed apple slices into the tubes and… the experiment started (6 November).
I look at the apples set the timer to 5 minutes… that was too fast… so ten minutes… oops that was not enough too…so one hour. And the alarm went off. Saw little change in any of the apples so I set the timer to three hours… Checked once again later but no change yet… So days went by… and at yesterday night (10 November) the exposed apple finally turned completely brown. What the hell… why did this apple take so long to turn brown? Some funny apple… But, it doesn’t matter… as all I needed was to have the apple that is exposed to the air to turn completely brown, no matter how long it takes. The other apples immersed in the different substances will turn stay fresh/yellow/ brown depending on the substance used.
Tried to use a bit of what I’ve learnt from bio…
Key J
+++ - White
++ - Slightly Yellow
+ - Yellow
- - Brown
Exposed apple- (-) smells like alcohol
In Oil- (++), Smells bad, Not well preserved
In Saliva- (++), smells like the exposed one
In lemon- (++), rotten lemon, apple smells and tastes okay
In honey- (+), smells real bad
In Vinegar- (?) turns pinkish with the vinegar, Smells vinegar
In Salt water- (+++) slightly pink, smells salty, tastes good like pickles
In Sugar Syrup- (+) smells bad
In Pure Water- (+++), slightly rotten but good to eat
In Soy Sauce- (+) moldy and disgusting.
So I gotta say that any liquid coating the white surface of the apples can prevent the browning process… All the apples in the liquids were way fresher than the exposed one. We all know that salt is the best. And I think I can conclude that eating any fruits by biting them a bit by bit is much better than slicing them up. And if you have no choice there are always lots of options other than Saliva…
