Reversing oxidation

[curiousmarketer]

Hello,

 

I am trying to create a "dummy friendly" demonstration to visually show how antioxidants (particularly Vitamin C) reverses the effects of oxidation and darkness or browning.

 

I know that one can prevent browning in an apple by putting lemon juice on the fruit immediately after cutting it open. Is there any way to reverse the browning of an apple after the damage has already been done... with any type of antioxidant?

 

Are there any other clear ways to show an antioxidant clearing up the results of oxidation? I also thought about using lemon juice to remove tarnish/browning.

 

Thank you for your help in advance.

[Suxamethonium]

To be honest, I am not sure- but no one else seems to be posting. So my suggestion is experiment! (Read MSDS etc, take necessary precautions, etc- its fruit so it should be fairly low risk).

 

Ok, so, the best suggestion for a proceedure I have is to:

 

*Cut an apple into 6 or 12 pieces (use knife under parental supervision if appropriate- lol, all this saftey annotation is going to kill me). Then divide tose into 3 groups.

*Two groups should be left alone, then one wetted with lemon juice (caution- acidic). Leave until the two untouched groups start to brown.

*Take a photo (make sure the discolouration is clear) and then place one of the untouched groups in the lemon juice.

*Take photos from then on at recorded time intervals (30secs to a minute- try to keep it regular but adjust as sensible).

*Then you can compare the colouration of the 2 controls with the colouration of the test group. This way you can see if the colour has continued to darken (at the same, or slower rate than the 1st control), stayed the same colour or lightened returning to the fresh state or somewhere inbetween.

 

I don't recomend you eat your experiment, although- technically I can't see any reason to suspect it any more dangerous than eating an apple with lemon juice on it but still...

 

(Haha- I hope I sorted the safety aspect!) Best of luck! Please comment your results if you do an experiment!

 

EDIT: Of coarse, if you can it will be valuable to consult literature to put any experimental findings into context

Edited January 28, 2012 by Suxamethonium