Orange-potato experiment results

To recap: After a bag of potatoes nestled between a bag of oranges and a bag of grapefruit in the pantry turned slimy in just a little over a week, I couldn’t help wondering if the citrus fruits were to blame.

To check this hypothesis, we set two bowls on the counter, one containing a potato and an orange, the other a potato and a grapefruit. It’s been 12 days now (11 for the grapefruit), and both potatoes look fine. In fact, I’ll probably use them in a soup tomorrow night.

To see past posts on this experiment, click here and here and here.

Orange-potato experiment update

Yesterday I reported (and photographed) a small damp spot underneath the potato. Today it’s gone. The potato looks as healthy as ever. Which makes me wonder: At one point I wondered if I should use a grapefruit instead of an orange, given that grapefruit seem so much more acidic and therefore possibly more likely to produce potato death rays. So I swapped out the orange for a grapefruit for a few minutes before deciding to proceed with the original experiment. (Some scientist, huh?) Anyway, now I’m wondering, is the grapefruit so powerful that it produced this effect in just those few minutes? Did I imagine the whole thing? What about the photographic evidence? What would Bill Nye the Science Guy say?

At any rate, here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to leave the orange-potato bowl alone (except for my previous tampering, I mean) and then I’m going to put another potato in a second bowl with a grapefruit.