If you read my blog regularly, you know that I love doing science activities with my kids. I truly believe that all kids are scientists at heart, since kids show such tremendous curiosity and desire to understand the world around them. Well, given my love for science I was excited to try this apple rotting experiment with them so they could observe what would happen to an apple under various conditions.
Note: This activity and many others are included in my Apple Unit Study.
For this experiment, I sliced and cored an apple into four quarters. I then placed one quarter into each of four glasses.
One glass was empty (except for air, of course).
One glass was filled with water.
One glass was filled with vinegar.
And one glass was filled with oil.
After three days, this is what the apples looked like. As you can see, the apple in the air glass had started to shrivel. The apples in the other three glasses looked relatively unchanged, although the glass filled with vinegar had taken on a pinkish tint.
At the end of a week, there were additional changes. Notably, the water and vinegar levels in the glasses had gone way down, exposing more of the apple to air. The oil, on the other had, had not evaporated like the other liquids.
We took the four slices of apple out of the glasses in order to examine them more closely. The apple in air was obviously the most shriveled, and had gotten somewhat hard. The other apples had all darkened in color.
I’ll admit to being a bit surprised by the results for the apple that had been left in air. I had expected it to start molding, but instead it just got dry and shriveled up. Did any of these results surprise you? How would you modify this experiment to try with your kids?
More apple resources
More apple posts from Gift of Curiosity:
- Apple Unit Study
- Apple Printables Pack
- Apple Do-a-Dot Printables
- Apple taste testing
- Dissecting an apple
- Apple sensory bin
- Apple Montessori activities
For more kid-friendly apple activities and apple printables, see my Apple Unit Study page and my Apples Pinterest board.
jeannine: waddleeahchaa says
September 4, 2014 at 11:35 amI like these simple science activities you can do with every day household items. My kiddos are old enough to take it one step further and research why each liquid and the air had a different effect on the apple.
Katie SG says
September 4, 2014 at 12:51 pmYes, my kids were too young to really understand WHY each liquid had a different effect, but as kids get older this is an activity you can easily expand on to have them explore that question. 🙂
Samantha @ Stir the Wonder says
September 4, 2014 at 6:13 pmThis is a great experiment! Thanks for linking up at the Thoughtful Spot Weekly Blog Hop! I’ll be featuring this post on Monday! We hope you stop by and link up again next week!
Carrie says
September 5, 2014 at 5:15 pmOh, how interesting!! Thank you for sharing at Sharing Saturday!
Ticia says
September 6, 2014 at 9:17 pmHmmm….. I might have tried a soda to see how it reacts to the apple. If you wanted to add in powders, I’ve seen some really interesting attempts at mummification using salt or baking soda.
Thanks for linking up to Science Sunday!
Katie SG says
September 7, 2014 at 9:01 amInteresting ideas! We never have soda in the house, but I agree it would have been interesting to try and I could buy a can of soda just for the experiment. And I love the idea of trying to mummify an apple!
Kandi says
September 30, 2014 at 10:34 pmHi I found you through Pintrest and love this idea. We are currently doing the letter A with My Father’s World and will be doing this experiment. I will add orange juice, a white soda (like Sprite), and a dark soda (like Coke). Thanks for this, my kids are going to love it!
Katie SG says
October 1, 2014 at 7:50 amAdding soda is a great idea! I’d love to know what happens! And orange juice is so acidic, that will be interesting as well.
kira says
September 6, 2017 at 7:48 amthis is a good experiment i might do it for my science fair project!