🍎 Stopping apples going brown: the whole packet

🍎 Stopping apples going brown · 2nd–6th grade · 1 day of testing · about $1 · 90 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 14 days away

Count back from your fair day and write in each date. Fewer days than this? The jobs share days, in this order; nothing is skipped.

Dates from my teacher

• My question is due
• Testing starts
• My results table and graph are due
• My board is due

In this packet

1. 🗓️ My project plan
2. 💭 My hypothesis
3. 🧺 Change, measure, keep the same
4. 🪜 My steps
5. 📊 My results
6. 📓 My logbook
7. ✅ My conclusion
8. ✂️ Board titles to cut out
9. 🏅 The judge's questions and my certificate

If I change what the apple slice is dipped in, then how brown the slice is after an hour will ________________, because _____________________________________________

What I think will happen, in my own words:

4 levels × 3 tries at each = 12 tries in all. If anything you keep the same changes, you won't know which change made the difference.

What I need

• 🍎 An apple: 1 for each try
• 🍋 Lemon juice
• 🧂 Salt
• 🚰 Water from the tap
• 🥛 Clear plastic cups, all the same size: 3, for dipping
• 🍽️ Small plates or saucers, all the same: 1 big one
• 📄 Paper
• 🖍️ Crayons or markers: brown and yellow
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer
• 🔪 A sharp kitchen knife, for the grown-up

Be safe: ✂️ Sharp · 🚫 Test food is not for eating

1. Grown-up: A grown-up cuts the apple into eight slices the same size.
2. Colour a brown scale on paper: 0 is white, 5 is dark brown.
3. Fill three cups: plain water, water with a spoon of salt, and lemon juice.
4. Dip two slices in each cup for one minute, and leave two slices dry.
5. Lay them on a plate with a label beside each pair.
6. After one hour, give every slice a brown score from your scale.
7. Do the whole test on two more days with a new apple.
8. Draw a bar for each dip. Which kept the apple whitest?

Write each number in your results table the moment you measure it.

I changed: Dipped in   I measured: how brown the slice is after an hour (brown score, 0 to 5)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: dipped in along the bottom, brown score, 0 to 5 up the side)

What I noticed: ______________________________________________

Write something every day you work on it, even the days you only gather things. More days? The three-page logbook prints from peabody.kids/science-fair/templates/logbook.

My hypothesis was ☐ right ☐ partly right ☐ not right.

I know because my numbers show:

What surprised me, or what might have gone wrong (7th and up):

Next time I would test:

Idea: Change a second thing: score every slice at 15, 30, 60 and 120 minutes, and draw a line for each dip.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: what keeps a cut apple from going brown?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing what the apple slice is dipped in would change how brown the slice is after an hour, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed what the apple slice is dipped in (Nothing, Plain water, Salt water, Lemon juice) and measured how brown the slice is after an hour in brown score, 0 to 5.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept slices from the same apple and dipping each for the same one minute the same, so only what the apple slice is dipped in was different.
5. How many times did you test it? Say something like: 3 times at each of my 4 levels, and I found the middle number.
6. What did you find out? Show me in your numbers. Say something like: Look at my table: Nothing and Lemon juice gave different numbers, and here's the pattern.
7. Was your hypothesis right? How do you know? Say something like: My numbers show whether I was right, partly right or not, and I can show you where.
8. Did anything go wrong, or surprise you? Say something like: One try was odd, so I did it again and wrote it in my logbook.
9. If you did it again, what would you change or test next? Say something like: I'd change a second thing: score every slice at 15, 30, 60 and 120 minutes, and draw a line for each dip.