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Colorado

What gases are inside the seed cavity?Could wiz live inside his pumpkin?How does the fruit produce the seed chamber atmosphere.Ethylene in there during ripening??.Why do fruit stop when theres a hole?? Anybody know

2/12/2012 6:48:53 PM

Menomonie, WI (mail@gr8pumpkin.net)

xylene....oxygen enters the cavity

2/12/2012 7:09:16 PM

Menomonie, WI (mail@gr8pumpkin.net)

Nope its not xylene..thats what is a sharpie marker..lol most likely C02

2/12/2012 7:17:04 PM

Pataskala,OH

Maybe it is just a vacuum with nothing in it. Someone could cut one open put a jar in it and then send it to a lab or something to see what is in it.

2/12/2012 7:26:25 PM

Torrance, Ca.

Xylene works great on our epoxies too! :)

2/12/2012 7:27:20 PM

Western NY

I'd say it's high time a scientist tried to answer that question again. The last time was 1942:

http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/17/4/509.full.pdf

14% Carbon Dioxide and 7% Oxygen by volume. I would guess the rest is water vapor.

I've never had mine stop from a split, they usually keep going until the rot sets in bad enough to halt things.

2/12/2012 7:30:25 PM

Pataskala,OH

Or maybe there is nothing inside it, maybe it does not come into existence until you look at it.

It better be spring soon posts on the message board keep getting weirder and weirder....

2/12/2012 7:30:44 PM

Midway, UT

When my pumpkin split this last year the growth went from 21 pounds a day down to 9 pounds a day in just two days. I know that Ron saw the same thing happen on The Freak this last year. My pumpkin kept growing for another 30 days after the pin hole formed on a dill ring and I got it to the scale with only a little bit of rot on the inside but something certainly happened to the growth almost immediately after the split. Anyone else seen that? There might be some interesting insights that could come out of this discussion if it is a common phenomenon.

2/12/2012 10:36:07 PM

Germany

In October 2011 a German pumpkin grower ("matzeseins") had analyzed the gas phase composition of two AGs (non-damaged, of course), and he has posted the results here:

http://crazy-growers.de/viewtopic.php?t=2670&highlight=

Even though it is in German, you will be able to read the chemical part of this entry.

2/13/2012 12:15:20 AM

Rhode Island

joe
i think thats why we get dill rings. its those darn gases trying to get out.bumping around against the inside.
thats probably why pumpkins have different amts of seed pockets as well?and, could go a long way to explaininmg why some pumpkins blow up at the blossom?
you know what happens when we humans have gas right?

if i hook up a pump and inject gases into the fruit during the high growth phase do you think this would help my chances?
great post joe. i learned a lot.
pap

2/13/2012 7:21:55 AM

Western NY

Thanks Pumpking!

2/13/2012 7:36:53 AM

President - GPC

Same thing here Arvada boy....except it kept screaming after it blew out the BES. I have pics where one can see the top kept growing, and the bottom half couldnt keep up. Eventually the bacteria took it down..Great post there CoJoe..!

2/13/2012 9:52:46 AM

Colorado

struggling with the translation... 20% oxygen, with a little CH4 and CO2, whats the other 77%?

2/13/2012 11:59:22 AM

Rhode Island

crap ?

2/13/2012 6:59:19 PM

Boise City, Oklahoma, USA

Well when I get near scale sometimes I feel like someone filled them with helium... ...sigh

2/14/2012 1:29:38 AM

Germany

@ peter mohr : the author says the measured values of CH4 and H2S ae not very accurate ( the values are nearly at the limits of measuring range of the instrument) but he states values for O2 and CO2 are accurate. He thought Co2 could be much higher, but I think a value 25 times as high as atmosphere is reasonable. The differenc to 100 % is stated as N2 and Argon etc.

@pap : probably crap

2/14/2012 6:57:05 AM

Germany

Hi Benny and the others who have already had a look at the data, with respect to the reliable contents of O2 and CO2 (pumpkin 1: 20.3% O2, 1.01% CO2; pumpkin 2: 20.1% O2, 1.22% CO2) the direction of the differences in O2 and CO2 contents between the two pumpkins (more CO2 when less O2) appear reasonable when taking temperature differences into account. A slightly higher temperature of pumpkin 2 can be responsible for a higher absolute humidity in the cavity (because you can expect humidity within a pumpkin to be close to the dew point), as this depends on temperature. A higher percentage in H2O in the gas phase would then automatically lower the relative percentage of O2, N2 and Ar, whereas the percentage of CO2 could still increase. The solubility of CO2 in water depends on temperature, and as the pumpkin warms up it can be expected to release not only water vapor into the cavity in order to maintain the dew point equilibrium, but also to release CO2, which was formerly dissolved in the moisture in the walls (and it will release more CO2 relative to H2O, because at higher temperatures the equilibrium between CO2 in the gas phase and CO2 dissolved in water will be shifted towards the CO2 in the gas phase). Further studies will have to reveal the significance of this influence on the composition.

2/14/2012 7:28:59 AM

Germany

...just to add another thought (which might arise when thinking about water vapor equilibrium and dew point within a pumpkin), wouldn´t it be fun to see clouds in the pumpkin? Unfortunately, this seems unlikely, because the vapor pressure of pure water (as pure as it could be in the pumpkin cavity atmosphere) would be higher than the water vapor pressure of the walls of the pumpkin, because the moisture at and in the walls contains salts and sugars, which cause a lower water vapor pressure (with respect to the same temperature, of course), and therefore, upon cooling, water would condense into the liquid phase of the walls in the cavity rather than spontaneously forming a cloud. The latter should, in addition to these thermodynamic reasons, also be hindered by the absence of particles in a clean pumpkin cavity gas phase, which could serve as seeds for droplets, whereas the kinetic barrier for the condensation into already present moisture of the walls should be significantly lower. The only way to overcome these phenomena would be to cool the interior of the pumpkin very fast, so that the diffusion of the moisture to the walls is slower than the over-saturation of the gas phase with water would cause the spontaneous formation of seeds for droplets. The two challenges would be to cool the gas phase in the pumpkin so fast without causing significantly lower temperatures of the walls, and to observe this phenomenon of the cloud in the pumpkin without opening the pumpkin (as this would introduce dust etc., and therefore is not representative for the undisturbed composition of the gas phase within a pumpkin).
Have fun all!

2/14/2012 8:55:19 AM

President - GPC

.....lol @A

2/14/2012 1:39:17 PM

Weatherman

This is more fun than getting free Twinkies out of a vending machine lol!

2/14/2012 2:13:09 PM

50 Acres

As long as the walls are thick, does it matter.

2/14/2012 6:33:42 PM