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In a jug of water, why did I find that lemon wedges floated but lime wedges sank?

Some friends and I were drinking from a jug of water that contained wedges of both lime and lemon. All the lemon wedges were floating, but all the lime wedges had sunk to the bottom of the jug.

There were enough pieces of both for us to infer this was not just coincidence, and all of us were pretty certain that we'd seen lime slices floating before. Can anyone offer an explanation?

Bladon Mooney, Leicester, UK

Thanks to the anonymous correspondent who sent a link to a page on the Steve Spangler Science site, where the answer is tested - Ed

(Image: tellgraf, stock.xchng)

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Last edited on: 2010-02-17 14:52:14

Categories: Domestic Science.

Tags: water, float, lemon, lime.

 

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 Anonymous says:
It may be to do with the thickness of the rind, which is light and cellular, thereby acting as the quot;buoyancy aidquot;. In the lime, it is thinner and denser, so there is less to help float the rest of it (which is pretty watery). Probably the best way to test this would be to take of the peel from both, and put the separate parts in the water.
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posted on 2009-06-18 20:49:48 | Report abuse

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 Dan says:
There are two main effects here: First, buoyancy. The slice of lime might have a higher density than the lemon slice.Secondly, in fizzy drinks, the bubbles that will invariably adhere to the citrus slices increase their buoyancy.
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posted on 2009-06-19 10:31:45 | Report abuse

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 Anonymous says:
It is importnat to remeber in your original quot;experimentquot; that all the lemon wedges and lime wedges may have come from the same individual lemon and lime respectively. Therefore, it is just to do with the single lime producing wedges that are more dense than the water. This is the anomaly as in most of my experiences of the fruit in a drink the limes and lemons both float!blair
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posted on 2009-06-20 12:18:03 | Report abuse

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 Anonymous says:
See Steve Spangler#39;s Science Experiment: quot;Floating Lemons and Sinking Limesquot;
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posted on 2009-06-21 09:03:10 | Report abuse

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 Robert says:
Ignore the previous poster. Musing about things you don#39;t have a clear understanding of may result in profound insights.Everybody knew that apples fell from the tree, but when Newton wondered why, he started a grand new realm of physics...
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posted on 2009-06-23 18:01:22 | Report abuse

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