Food - Drink
There Is A Scientific Reason Peeling Oranges Is So Messy
By ALEX SCHAUER
Oranges are a delicious, healthy treat, but can only be enjoyed after peeling, and if you don't have a knife and just use your fingers, you'll likely get orange juice all over the place. However, you shouldn't feel too bad about your peeling skills; all that mess is merely the result of a biological process innate to oranges.
According to Inverse, the oils in an orange peel can eject juice at a rate of nearly 10 milliliters per second, which is a thousand times the speed of a rocket launch. Tiny pockets of oil glands in the rind burst open when the peel is bent backwards, and researchers even suspect that this reaction is a defense mechanism for the fruit.
Orange juice is very sticky and can be toxic to predators like insects and plant microbes, so these "micro-jets" may serve that purpose. More importantly, this ability could be harnessed to develop new methods of rapid fluid disposal and create devices like one-time asthma inhalers that are more affordable and work faster.