Mummified Apples

Last week, we unburied our mummified apple out of the baking-soda/salt mixture. Our camera was not working at the time, so I sketched pictures of what the apples looked like. When we dumped out the mixture, our mummified apple had to be "excavated"! The inner baking-soda and salt had hardened to form a shell around the apple, and when tapped with a butter knife, fell apart. It was colored a dull yellow inside. When we compared the two apples, this is what we found.

The "mummified" apple was considerably shrunken--about the same size as our control apple. (The apple that just sat out) However, the marked difference was that the mummy-apple was dry, firm, and light-colored. It had a dry section of peel still intact around it's stem.

The control apple was bruised, smelly, and darkly colored. It also had a small section of peel around the stem, but it was wet and floppy.

Somehow, the baking soda and salt preserved the apple and kept it dryer, although it shrunk. The other apple would have eventually wasted into nothing, while attracting lots of bugs. This experiment from our Anatomy book showed us that certain mixtures of chemicals can preserve things. (Like the Egyptians did to corpses)