4. Discussion

4. Discussion

4.1 Key findings & Analysis of results

Looking at the the colour index RED, it is shown that the condiment which resulted in an apple slice with the lowest average RED value is Distilled water, with a RED value of 133 while the highest average RED value is brown sugar, with a RED value of 186

.For the colour index GREEN, the condiment which resulted in the highest average GREEN value is again Brown Sugar, with a value of 155, while the condiment which resulted in the lowest GREEN value is White vinegar, with a GREEN value of 91.

Based on the average of the RAW values of the colour index RED, our experiment results show that distilled water would result in the lowest average R value on the apple. Hence, through these experiment results it is shown that distilled water, among the household condiments tested, is the best food preservative.

However, there are anomalies in these results.We predicted that Distilled water would have a RED value of 120, however, results show that the RED value was actually 133.We thought that Tap water would have a higher RED value compared to bicarbonate by 40, however, bicarbonate had a higher RED value compared to tap water by 3.white vinegar and msg were supposed to have different RED values, but instead both had the same RED value of 165.

4.2 Explanation of key findings  

These might be due to the different chemical compounds present in the different condiments. Certain compounds may have allowed more the flesh of the apple cube to be exposed to more air compared to other condiments, which may have restricted the exposer of air to the apple cube, hence resulting in the different RED values of the apple slices. In addition to that, there might been certain compounds present in both condiments/similar compounds,hence resulting in same amounts of air exposed to the apple and hence the same RED values, which explains the cause of White vinegar and MSG being the same.

4.3 Evaluation of Hypothesis

With these results, it shows mixed results. Although some household condiments such as distilled water did show a lower RED index value compared to the control, which was allowed to oxidise normally, there were some condiments that in fact accelerated oxidation instead of slowing it down, such as MSG.

4.4 Limitations and Areas for improvement 

The accuracy of this experiment was however, limited by the quality of the apparatus provided to us. We can hence say that the experiment results were not 100% accurate. In the future, if we were provided with a set of apparatus that was perhaps newer/better quality than the apparatus provided in this experiment, we may have been able to produce a set of results that are more accurate.  We could have also cut the apples more properly. Some slices were a bit different than others. This caused the experiment to become less accurate as the surface area of the exposed effects the result derived. Thus, we cut the apples into cubes which made an easier reference to make them look similar. We could have also cut the apples more quickly. During the first experiment, the apples were cut too slowly causing them to already oxidize even before the experiment begins. This reduced the accuracy of the experiment as the difference between the results were not very noticeable. To improve on this, we cut the apples more quickly and submerged them in the solutions before they already started to oxidize