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The 7 Weeks of Apples by Peter B. Megan C. Siebron M. Dana R. Ms. Edens’ 1st Grade Class, Room 103 Science Fair at Timber Ridge Magnet School March 25, 1998

Materials:

4 apples
4 lightweight plastic containers
knife, peeler and board
paper and pencil
scale
crayons

Procedure:
We each adopted one of 4 apples.

Peter cut his apple in half with a knife.
Megan chose the whole apple.
Siebron peeled her apple with a peeler.
Dana cut her apple into small pieces with a knife.

We put each apple into its own plastic container and
observed it in the classroom for seven weeks. We did not
cover the containers. It was warm in the classroom.

We weighed the apples with their containers once a week.
For each apple, we made graphs showing the weight of the
apples.

Prediction:
We predicted that the apples would rot and get moldy.
We also predicted that the apples would lose weight, because they would dry out.
The juice in the apples would evaporate.

Results:
All apples lost weight, and they all got moldy.

The apple cut into small pieces lost most of its weight over time, and it dried out most. At the beginning, the cut up apple filled up the whole bowl, but at the end, the layer was only about half an inch thick.

The peeled apple lost almost half its weight in the first week. It developed mold only on the bottom where some juice accumulated. It became hard.

The apple that was cut in half had green and white mold only on the cut surfaces. The halves shrank a lot.

The whole apple stayed in good shape for about the first three weeks. It did have a small cut, though. Around this cut, the apple turned brown and soft. A finger easily made a hole in this brown part, and we saw juice in the hole. The rest of the apple still looked good and felt firm, and there was no mold. After another week, the whole apple looked very brown and soft. At the end, it was sticky at the bottom.

We noticed that some apples had acquired peculiar smells. The apple that was cut in half reminded Peter of the wilderness. Siebron thought her peeled apple did not smell like anything in particular. Megan’s apple smelled like a nice apple for a long time. The little bits of apple smelled like rotten wine to Dana.

This is a picture of four rotton apples.
Conclusions:
The more you cut up an apple, the more it dries out.
Juice makes the apple turn moldy. Whole apples last best.
What a rotting experience!
Summary of Observations

	Whole apple	Apple cut in half	Peeled apple	Apple in pieces
Week 1	looks fine	looks fine	looks fine	looks fine, tastes good
Week 2	looks fine	bits of mold on the cut surfaces	outside looks shriveled	small bits of mold
Week 3	soft brown spot around cut	moldy spots are bigger	bits of mold on the bottom	gray, smelly, moldy
Week 4	brown soft spot is larger; hole	green and white mold	mold is a little worse	mold is worse
Week 5	very soft	mold is thick	no change	mold is even worse
Week 6	soft all over, moldy spots	mold is very thick	a little more shriveled	dried out, but still moldy
Week 7	sticky on the bottom	dried out, but moldy	hard an all dried out	mold holds apple pieces together

Weight of Apples Over Time (grams)

	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5*	Week 6	Week 7
Whole apple	296	287	274	274	242	210	182
Peeled apple	227	132	86	64	60	55	52
Apple cut in half	249	177	158	125	100	75	60
Apple cut in pieces	274	184	132	88	68	48	47

*Estimated as average of week 4 and week 6

We would like to thank Peter's Mom for all her help on this project!