The scientific method - What would be the best way to keep a Banana?

I've been trying to figure out a way to best teach Madison about the scientific method. This is what I've come up with. :)

Madison wanted to know what would happen if you put fruit like a banana in an air tight container. Would it still rot? Good question, one that I didn't know the answer too. Madison and I have designed an experiment to find out the best way to keep a banana. Following the scientific method we will soon answer this question.

Day 1 - (experiment started 12- 31-14)

Purpose: If you put fruit like a banana in an air tight container. Would it still rot? This was our original question. After analyzing for a while and deciding on our experiment method we decided to change the question to: What is the best way to store a banana?

Research: How can we set up an experiment that will answer this question. Based on our research we decided the best method would be to use a vacuum sealer, and possibly Oxygen absorbers.


Hypothesis: (an educated guess) - Madison had observed that the cloth stockings we use for Christmas were always stored in air tight containers. I explained that we did this to keep it from dry rotting. This is what initiated her original question,  "What would happen if you put fruit like a banana in an air tight container?" Based off of her initial research she decided that her Hypothesis would be that the banana would not rot as quickly when it was vacuum sealed. After discussing the experiment a little further we decided that we should also use oxygen absorbers.

Experiment: We discussed how using a control will help us to establish the standard of comparison in scientific experimentation. We decided to use one banana that had nothing done to it. The experiment was set up to use the following bananas in the conditions below.
a) Control Banana- nothing has been done to it
b) Saran wrapped stem
c) Sealed in a bag
d) Vacuum-sealed in a bag
e) Vacuum sealed in a bag with oxygen absorbers
f) Sealed in a bag with oxygen absorbers

Analysis: Recording our data. We recorded this part on paper with a chart marking the brownness & firmness of all the Bananas. Over the course of all 6 days we found that the sealed bananas showed less browning, but they also became squishier over the days. There was gasses produced & trapped in all for of the sealed banana bags.

Conclusion: Although from this pic it is hard to tell the actual results of our experiment. Here's what we learned: Sealing and Vacuum Sealing the bananas did help to keep the banana skins from going brown the longest, but that did not keep the bananas fresh. Infact the sealed bagged bananas seemed to rot from the inside out, they were quite squishy and produced a lot of smelly gasses. So even though they initially looked better, they weren't.

The only 2 bananas that I would consider still edible were the (a) control &  (b) the saran wrapped stem banana. In this pic you can see the difference that the Saran wrap had on the banana's stem.

So, to answer our original questions:
If you put fruit like a banana in an air tight container. Would it still rot? Yes, bananas will still produce gasses & even though the outside would not turn brown as quick. They definitely still rotted. They actually rotted faster only from the inside out.
What is the best way to store a banana? Our experiment showed that the best way to store a banana is either leaving it alone or by saran wrapping the stem.

Note: we could expand this experiment to compare Saran Wrapped vs. Control, but I think we will save that project for another day. :)