Weight watchers

"It's losing weight!"

No, our apples are not observing some sort of produce "point system" in an effort to slim down for summer, but we have been watching their weight (well, "mass").

Last week, we peeled apples,

carved a face,









and measured the mass.












Since then, we've been tracking the changes:


measuring the mass,







recording it in a chart,







and creating a line graph to depict the results.

Observation: "It's losing weight!"
Yes, the apples are steadily losing mass.
So the question of the day is: Why is matter doing a disappearing act? What's happening here?

We've noticed a few other changes as well:



"Ours has a beard! Ms. S, our apple has a beard!" (S.G., 1st grade)




Yes, indeed it does.





And this one, well--"I'm melting . . . . "








I feel sure that in a drier climate, this experiment would go in a far less disgusting direction . . . one that would not require wet wipes to clean excess "beard" from our balances. But then what fun would science be without a little "graphically gross" every now and then?