activity 16: The Self-Slicing Banana Convince your more gullible friends that you own a new variety of genetically engineered bananas- they're grown already sliced! Ingredients: a banana a needle What to do: Carefully pierce the banana on one of its edges. Insert the needle into the banana and wiggle it back and forth, cutting through the flesh. Be careful to leave the skin intact. Move the needle down and repeat. Continue at regular intervals until you've sliced the whole banana. When you now peel the banana, the fruit will fall out in slices. Whats Happening! Banana flesh is actually made up of thousands of tiny hairs, which when ripe makes the fruit easy to tear. A needle can easily slice through it. And the holes the needle makes in the skin are small enough to pass notice at a distance. More! Bananas are great for getting other fruit to ripen. If you have some summer fruit that isn't ripe enough to eat yet, leave it in a bowl or bag with a banana. As the banana ripens it gives off a gas called ethylene, which acts as a signal to other fruit that it's time to ripen too- you'll soon have a ripe fruit bowl. This also explains why you can go away for a weekend and find that all your fruit has gone off by the time you get back- once the ripening process starts, and ethylene levels rise, most fruit will follow suit in response.
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