Lemon Experiment

This is a small science experiment to prove if a lemon will sink or swim if placed in a glass of water. After all the fruit with its acidic juice is one of the most popular ingredients in the kitchen. It is also rather popular in making up science experiments such as writing with invisible ink.

So let’s try and learn a bit more about our yellow colored friend here. Here is what you will need for the experiment. A couple of lemons, a large glass, some water to fill up the glass, and a knife to cut the lemon. It is an easy experiment to set up. First you put the water into the glass. Do remember that you will be adding the lemon to the glass and so don’t fill it all the way up to avoid spills.

Now add the whole lemon fruit to the water glass. What do you observe? It floats. Now that we know that the whole lemon can float we are going to quarter the lemon. Do the individual quarters float? No they sink. Maybe that’s the wrong shape to cut the lemon into. Let’s try again.

This time its going to be lemon rings. Now check if these float? No they don’t. The lemon wedges and rings do not float in the water because the pulp in the lemon starts absorbing water from the glass. This makes the cut pieces heavy and they sink. While the lemon is whole you have a watertight rind making it impossible for the water to soak into the lemon. Now wasn’t that an interesting science experiment?