All About Antioxidants: Apple Oxidation!!🍊🍎🧖‍♀️

Welcome to today's learning sesh! We're going to be looking at antioxidants and following it up with a quick experiment!

Antioxidant: An antioxidant is something that protects cells against free radicals

• Free Radicals are unstable molecules that cause damage to cells by stealing electrons from the skin cells

• When free radicals take electrons from the skin cells, it means the skin cells are being oxidized.

• Free radicals are things like air pollution or sunlight

Free radicals are bad for our skin because they damage our skin cells, causing wrinkles and dark spots.

Our skin naturally makes antioxidants, but sometimes we need a little extra help from ingredients in our skincare.

• One that you've probably heard of is Vitamin C

  • Vitamin C neutralizes the free radicals, so that the cells stay healthy.

  • Vitamin C comes in the form of serums and creams, and you can even find it in oranges and lemons!

The Experiment

• After you cut an apple, it's eventually going to turn brown, why?

This is because there is a chemical reaction when the apple is exposed to air. This process is kind of like how our skin cells react to free radicals.

Today, your objective is to discover which liquid will save the apple from going brown!

If we apply different liquids to the apple, how will the browning, or oxidation, process change?

• take some time to think about this, based on how Vitamin C neutralizes the oxidation of skin cells

Materials

• 3 Apple Slices (around 1/2 - 1 inch thick)

• 2 cups or bowls

• Testing Liquids

  • Lemon Juice

  • White vinegar

• A plate

1. Prepare the 2 cups and pour lemon juice into one of them and white vinegar into the other (enough to cover the apple)

2. After cutting 3 slices from an apple, immediately place them the liquid, and leave the third one out in the air

3. Let the two apple slices soak for 10 minutes

4. Place the apple slices on a plate and let them rest for 2 hours, and be sure to label them!

5. Examine which apple turned the most brown

   

   
   

   Based on the results, we can see that lemon juice actually slowed down oxidation. This is because vitamin C is in lemon juice. Just like how the vitamin C stopped the apple from browning, scientists can use it in skincare to neutralize free radicals from the sun or air pollution and keep our skin cells healthy!

Do you want to see how much you learned? Take this quiz right here!! 👩‍🔬💖

Thanks for stopping by! As always, keep exploring what interests you! ✨