Lemon Juice

You’ll need:

• One pear or apple.
• One lemon or lemon juice.
• A knife

Try this:

Cut your pear or apple in half (being careful not to hurt yourself) and rub your lemon juice onto one half of your fruit. Leave this for a minute then return and see what has happened to the different halves.

You should have noticed that the half you put lemon juice on stayed the same and the half that didn’t have any juice on it turned brown!

Whats Happening?

When you cut the fruit a lot of its cells were damaged, when the liquid from these cells was released it came into contact with air which turned it brown (it oxidised). This can be prevented by two things; vitamin C and citric acid.

Lemon juice contains both of these and so when you covered the one half in lemon juice it reacted with the air to for a clear covering.