Educating Risa

A couple weeks ago the boys and I did some learning about Ancient Egypt, which I blogged about here. One of the activities we did was try to mummify apple slices in different mediums: table salt, epsom salt, baking soda, and a ‘control variable’ apple that was simply left exposed to the air. A week and a bit later, we pulled out our apple slices for a closer look.

Here’s Gareth investigating the apple slice left in regular table salt. It was still somewhat flexible and spongy—not fully dried out—and there was very little browning.

I am glad I had Daegan dump the container with the baking soda apple, as Gareth is allergic to mould. I snapped a very quick pic and got it out of the house asap:

We then examined the apple slice left in Epsom salt, and found it similar to the one left in regular table salt: still somewhat flexible, with little browning. It seemed slightly more dried out than the table salt apple:

Finally, we checked our control apple that was simply exposed to the air. It was BY FAR the most dried out of the apple slices, leading the boys to conclude that to mummify things here, you need only expose them to the dry Calgary air!

While I agreed with their conclusion if the only goal of mummification is to dry something out, I pointed out that there was another difference between the control apple and the ones left in salts: the control was much more browned (hence decayed) than the ones left in salts. So if the goal of mummification was to preserve without decay, perhaps a longer time in a salt mix would be best. Still, I did find it pretty funny that our air is more drying than salt!