Hi!
I am looking for ideas to use for my project in the next few weeks. I wanted to do something to do with ethylene in fruits but my teacher keeps saying I have to do 3 experiments and I'm not sure how to spread that across 3 experiments.
Any ideas would be great!!
Advanced Higher Biology Project Ideas!
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Re: Advanced Higher Biology Project Ideas!
Hi and welcome to Scibuddies.
Fruit ripening occurs through the action of a gas--ethylene--and that is pretty unusual as gases are not often the chemical signals for a biological process.
I was trying to think of some different kinds of experiments that you could do to test the action of ethylene. Everyone knows that if you put a ripe banana in a bag with tomatoes they will ripen faster, so that's not worth testing.
I was thinking more along the lines of ways to slow the ripening process. I often end up with more ripe bananas than i can eat because they ripen so fast in warm weather. If there was a way of storing them that could retard the ripening, that would be very useful. I did a search for activated carbon because I know that substance is able to adsorb lots of different gases. That's why it is used in gas masks. I found an interesting site that appears to be a patent application for just such an agent to slow down ripening:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4337276A/en
You could work up some experiments to test several different substances for absorbing ethylene. In fact, you could try making your own activated charcoal from peach pits as was done in world war one for use in gas masks:
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/ar ... ks/252294/
I did not know this, but bentonite, a natural type of clay, can also adsorb ethylene: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10 ... 4.30.3.265
You could try preparing a ripening retarder by mixing activate charcoal and bentonite and testing it on bananas, apples, peaches pears, or any other fruits that are ripened by ethylene.
Let me know what you think of this idea and we can work out the experimental details.
Good luck!
Scibee
Fruit ripening occurs through the action of a gas--ethylene--and that is pretty unusual as gases are not often the chemical signals for a biological process.
I was trying to think of some different kinds of experiments that you could do to test the action of ethylene. Everyone knows that if you put a ripe banana in a bag with tomatoes they will ripen faster, so that's not worth testing.
I was thinking more along the lines of ways to slow the ripening process. I often end up with more ripe bananas than i can eat because they ripen so fast in warm weather. If there was a way of storing them that could retard the ripening, that would be very useful. I did a search for activated carbon because I know that substance is able to adsorb lots of different gases. That's why it is used in gas masks. I found an interesting site that appears to be a patent application for just such an agent to slow down ripening:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4337276A/en
You could work up some experiments to test several different substances for absorbing ethylene. In fact, you could try making your own activated charcoal from peach pits as was done in world war one for use in gas masks:
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/ar ... ks/252294/
I did not know this, but bentonite, a natural type of clay, can also adsorb ethylene: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10 ... 4.30.3.265
You could try preparing a ripening retarder by mixing activate charcoal and bentonite and testing it on bananas, apples, peaches pears, or any other fruits that are ripened by ethylene.
Let me know what you think of this idea and we can work out the experimental details.
Good luck!
Scibee