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Thursday, May 23, 2019

Mummifying Apples in Room 7 & 8

In our Ancient Egyptian Topic, we have been learning about Egyptian Mummies.
We thought it would be fun to do some investigating in science, using similar mummifying salts as the Natron salt that the Egyptians used.  (Natron salt) came out of the ground. Each group had to mummify two pieces of apple. They had to mark them A and B and choose from the different recipes of Baking Soda and Salt combinations. Some groups tried all salt, or all baking soda, some more of one that the other, or equal amounts.
We had to make predictions what would happen, and write our ideas down. After three days, one week, two weeks and a month we tip them out into an ice cream container, brush off the salt/soda, observe and weigh the apple pieces. We record the weights on sheet.
After two weeks, most are looking brown and dry, just like a mummy skin. But some recipes have made the apple go mouldy and a bit damp. All have lost weight.  We have a control apple piece which is just sitting in the jar with no salts. It has lost weight too, but not as much as the others.
We will post an update after the final examination and weighing in two more weeks.

Here are some photos of our science.

Brushing off the salt/soda 
Our control Apple
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2 comments:

  1. Kia ora Room 7 and 8. We are from Punui- O- toka at South Hornby School. It's great to see you have been so patient in waiting for your results, it must have taken a lot of hard work. That is a clever experiment that you thought of and it was great that you used a control apple. Our first thought was "ewww those apples look disgusting!" This makes us think about making playdough in our inquiry. Maybe next time you could use two control apples and see if they are both the same? We look forward to seeing the update!

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  2. Hi. We are MrsMgC group from Punui-o-toka. We found your post interesting and learnt something new about Ancient Egypt. We liked seeing the photos of the experiment and the stages the apple went through. You wrote a detailed quality blog post. It would good to see more of the children's work as well as photos of the apple.

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