Apple left in water for 200 days

Originally published at: Apple left in water for 200 days | Boing Boing

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Long route to making apple sauce.

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No surprise there. I’ve seen what they look like in the birdbath after a few days.

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In this time-lapse footage, an Apple left in water for 200 days

Was expecting an Apple. Saw an apple. Sigh.

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But how did the reconstitute it at the end? I think you missed the lede here.

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Time Cube

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It would be more interesting if it were submerged - it’s the exposed bit that gets eaten, in the usual way, by fruit flies, so what happens when the familiar mechanisms of fruit destruction aren’t in play? How long would the apple last, fully submerged? Presumably it would still, eventually, rot but in a way that wasn’t familiar.

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Came for the fruit fly apocalypse, was not disappointed.

Oh god, the fruit flies.

One time I accidentally forgot my mom gave me a pomegranate for Christmas, and I left it in a bag in a box, and a month or so later I started getting fruit flies and could not figure out why. Then I found the pomegranate.

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Yeah, I wanted to see like… would the cells get engorged with the water by being submerged? Would it rot from whatever small amounts of bacteria exist in tap water? This was just… what you expected to happen, happened!

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It surprised me that didn’t seem to bloat up with water, as even not completely submerged, if it was going to absorb water, it would have. I guess the skin of the apple provides a pretty good seal, even long-term. It makes me think it would have taken a lot more than 200 days for it to fall apart if fully submerged - which is perhaps why they didn’t do that.

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They should have set it up next to a tank with a siphon hose so it would keep its water level steady with the water intake being regular rather than periodic.

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I was thinking they should have sealed it, at least to the degree sufficient that it wouldn’t lose water to evaporation. Adding water would cause the mineral content to steadily increase and change things (probably not that it would have much of an impact, though).

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Colour me disappointed. I was expecting it to stay submerged for that amount of time. What happens when the flies can’t get to it?

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Well how do you like them apples?

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I had the same thought; I suspect it still would have decayed, but what would that have looked like in a “submerged in distilled water” situation?

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Once after a long-ish hiking adventure, I just threw my bag down in a little-used room and forgot about it. Weeks later we were inundated with the buggers. Scratching our heads like idiots until I one day I had need of something I was sure I’d left in my bag. It was there all right, along with a bag of half-eaten trail treats and Fly Home Base. Creepifying.

It’s still my favorite bag, tho.

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This reminded me a bit of those videos showing the explosion of biotic diversity around whale carcasses on the ocean floor…kind of like the micro version of that.
And agreed, I would’ve liked to see what happened when it stayed submerged the whole time.

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On my way to work I am currently observing a rental e scooter left in running water for not yet quite 200 days. It kept blinking for the first five days or so, which is impressive, I suppose.

(And.now,.it wasn’t me who put it there)

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I am here for the unboxing of Neo-Atlantis Apple HQ. Or, you know, an Apple user who sits in a tub while computing and maxing out that water protection on the iPad Max for all it’s worth (at least 200d, yeah?)

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