Problem:
What percentage of an orange is water?

Research:
All living things such as humans and plants must have water to survive. Water gets recycled in a process called the water cycle. Evaporation is the change of liquid-water to water vapor. Evaporation of water occurs everyday whether it is in a cup or outside in a lake. Evaporation is a major part of the water cycle.

Dry Foods
A major section of food industry today is production of dry-foods. It is a great way to preserve food when not in need. All sorts of foods are dried including meats, vegetables, fruits and instant coffee products. Drying food is the process of evaporating all the interior water of a food product and in most cases this will be done in a hot air tunnel. Many seasonal products will be dried to reduce the cost of storage and distribution of the products during the year. Drying Foods is less costly to store over a long period of time. Some liquid foods such as orange juice are usually partially dried to lose 80% of their water and the result is called concentrate.

Hypothesis:
Since there is a lot of liquid juice in an orange, our hypothesis states that there will be 50% or more water in an orange.

Material needed for this experiment:

1. An orange
2. Kitchen knife
3. Paper plate
4. Aluminum foil
5. Weighing Scale

Procedure:

• Weigh the orange
• Weigh the paper and aluminum foil which is being used to dry the orange in.
• Cut the orange in very thin slices to speed up the drying process.
• Spread the slices over the paper, which is placed on the aluminum foil.
• Keep it in a warm place until it is fully dry. You can expect it to take 4-36 hours depending on the heat and airflow. We used a desk light with a 150 watt lamp and a fan as a drier. We mounted our desk light to be about a foot above the sliced oranges and place the fan about 10 feet away from the orange slices facing the oranges to create airflow. In this way we completed the drying process in 10 hours.
• Weigh the orange slices once fully dried. Don't forget to deduct the weight of the paper and the aluminum foil if you are weighing the orange slices with the paper and aluminum foil.

 

Weight the orange, paper and aluminum foil separately and together and record the results. Use a precise scale for more accuracy. Cut the orange in tin slices and spread them over the paper and aluminum foil. Keep the slices in a warm place with enough air flow. Weight the sample a few times to trace the progress of drying. Weight the final dry orange slices to calculate the weight loss caused by drying.

Record And Analyze Data:

After the orange slices where completely dry, we put them back on the weighing scale and weighed it with the paper and aluminum foil. We then subtracted 15 grams from that total since the foil and paper weighed 15 grams. Just like we stated before, the orange weighed 309 grams before the experiment was started and now weigh 58 grams. To figure out the percentage of solids in the orange, we divide the weight of dry sample to the weight of original sample that is : (58/309=0.1877). To figure out the percentage of water in the orange, we used this formula: (309-58)/309=0.8122
In result of our experiment, we found out that orange is consisted of 81% water.