The Perfect Mix of Lemon and Lime
Although only one of them is buyoant.
Howdy! It’s Joey, back with more Fun Fact Friyay. Today’s fact is a bit sour, but for good reason.
Lemons typically float while limes typically sink.
When you order a drink from a restaurant or bar, it might come with a neat little lemon or lime wedge as an accoutrement.
Or perhaps you’re a fan of a beverage like Sprite, which pairs lemon and lime flavors in one refreshing drink. The soda also enables you to jump into a basketball court as if it’s a pool, but only sometimes.
We like a good fun fact that we can test at home, so if you have either a lime or a lemon, pull it out and fill up a glass of water. Or, pull up a video on YouTube, like this one of a man with a charming accent.
We can also dive into the experiment that STEM educator Steve Spangler did to test these floating (or non-floating) pieces of citrus.
Per the USDA, the average lime is 88.26% water by weight, while a lemon is 87.4%. That means lemons have a bit higher air content.
Sarah Downs, RD, adds that lemons and limes have similar densities to water, but limes are a bit more dense. As we all totally remember from science class, you calculate density by taking the mass of an object and dividing it by density.
In Spangler’s experiment, the lime’s density was 1.12 grams per milliliter, while the lemon was 1.02 grams per milliliter.
So, the simple answer is that limes are slightly denser than water, while lemons are slightly less dense than water. And that density is why limes sink and lemons float.
Is that a satisfying conclusion? Not really, but it’s the best one we’ve got. Other theories suggest that limes do a better job retaining juice than lemons, or that lemon seeds help keep lemons more buoyant.
In trying to get to the bottom of this fact (rather than just the bottom of a glass, like a lime), I stumbled upon a terrific joke from Reddit, courtesy of the aptly named r/CantTakeMeSeriously:
“Its the same thing with ants. It turns out that if you throw a group of ants into water, the females will sink. The others are boy ant.”
If that doesn’t get you rolling your eyes into the weekend, I don’t know what will.