Hi snowdrops, thank you for including me in your project! You did a phenomenal job and developing an interesting question, implementing it, and I'm especially impressed with your graphs and conclusions. I hope you have a great rest of the semester!

Hey Ms. Janet, I wanted to thank you for all the help and coming out of your way to work with us. Thank you, have an amazing week

It was so fun working with you and we thank you for giving your time to helping us! 

Hello! Today is our final day of doing this planting science project. So we are doing our conclusion taking final photos and uploading or graphs. We are very thankful that you have been able to help us so much throughout this incredible experience. I hope that you continue to make so many other children happy throughout there science experiment with you. 

Ms Janet, I have uploaded my final plating science journal.

I have uploaded my graph to Plating science. hope you have a good day noah.

Thank you for helping us and giving your time to us!

Hi Ms Janet thanks for being our mentor and handling the responsibility that comes with it unfortunately this is the last day we work together, goodbye. Noah

Your graphs look great! It's also very interesting the trends you are seeing, although I suppose the controls maybe would not have fallen off if there hadn't been the issue with the glycol leak preventing you from watering them. 

I'm excited to read your conclusions! Please let me know if you have any questions as you are working on that. 

Hello! Yesterday was the last day that we were collecting data so today we focused on making our graphs. They should all look around the same if not exactly the same. We will make sure that everyone's graph is uploaded by the end of the day tomorrow. Tomorrow we will be wrapping the project up and doing the conclusion section. 

Our controls and droughts look like they are wilting because we have not watered them in a long time. The floods look the best. We watered all of our plants with their normal amount of water. The floods were watered 40 mm, we water controls 25 mm, and 15 mm for droughts. 

Oh no! I'm sorry to hear you had issues with the facilities, but I hope you did something fun on your days off :)

Let me know any other questions you have for me as you're making those graphs!

Hello! Yes I think we understand what we can do and that sounds like a great idea! I am sorry that we have not talked to you in several days but we have actually had several suprise days off because of a school problem with some of the facilities. So we will not be able to give you any data tables but we will give them to you on Monday!

Hi there,
So the easiest thing to do would be to average each of those treatments, so for each day you will have three points - and average height for the control, an average for the drought, and an average for the flood. Are you able to do that in the program you are using? 

Hi. Riley updated you. We had a question about the graph, should we average the controls, droughts, and floods so we can fit in a data table? We are only asking this because the program we are using will not let us add any more. Thank you, bye. 

Hello! Today we watered our drought plants 15 milliliters of water each! We then looked them over and we checked the onions which are starting to look a little worse with the onion controls looking better then the other ones. The colors with the onions are still the same but some onions are starting to break. Then we looked at the radishes which are now breaking even more but the colors are all mainly the same. The drought plants are almost completely shriveled up and the floods are looking also not very great but they are looking better then the droughts. Also we are not sure if we would be able to continue the experiment because after we are done with the Planting Science we will be moving on to something else and might not be allowed to keep on going. We will be starting our graphs today and we will be doing a line graph like you suggested. Have a great day!

Hi guys! I really see what you mean about the drought and flood plants looking worse! I think it's ok to let them drop over. It's a good visual of the difference in plant health.

I'm not sure if this would be logistically possible, but one thing I would be curious about is whether, once the experiment is over, what would happen if you switch to watering them all a normal amount? So what I mean is, first finish the experiment and collect all your data. Then, if you're able to keep the plants going another couple weeks, try watering them all the "normal" amount and see if the drought and flood plants are able to recover, of it they are too far gone. Just because I'm curious!

In terms of the graphs - great question! I would use a line graph, with time on the x axis, and average height on the y axis. You could graph the three treatments (normal, flood and drought) as three separate lines, with different colors. Make sure you include a key so we know which color is which treatment!

Does that make sense to you? If it doesn't make sense, I can send you an example graph with fake data on Tuesday morning!

This is an exciting time in the experiment when you get to make the results and conclusions sections!

Hi! We watered out floods with 40 mm and our controls with 25 mm we also measured all of our plants, and the controls look good while the floods and droughts look worse. I was wondering if we should use a wooden stake to hold the radish stems and leaves up.  Do you have any questions about the plants? Have a good day, bye.

Hello! Noah has already updated you on what we have done but we also have a question for you. We are supposed to make a graph for the end of the project plant growth and we where wondering what type of graph you thought would be the best for it? Also thank you for being able to get back to us so quickly all the time! We are excited to spend these last few weeks with you!

Thank you for all the updates! I'm enjoying your updates and journal entries, and interested to keep hearing about the differences in plant height vs. coloration between the flood drought and control treatments. Keep up the good work! Let me know if you have any questions!

Hello! Today we did not do anything to our plants we did not water or measure them because after all that measuring they where starting to look a little bit beat up so we are going to leave them alone for at least today and maybe tomorrow. All of the plants seem to be doing well though but the droughts and floods are doing a little worse then they were yesterday while the controls are still thriving and living their good life. We are very excited to keep working with you!

Today we watered all of our floods 40 milliliters of water and our controls 25 milliliters of water. The droughts are still not doing very well and the floods are also not looking very good but are still doing better than the droughts. The onions are also making very good progress in there growth and some have already grown over an inch in just one day.

Ohhhh this is very interesting that (at least so far) the radish seems to be more affected by the amount of water they are receiving, compared to the onions. Also very interesting the difference between your qualitative measurements (observations) and your quantitative measurements (height). 

Today we watered our droughts 15 milliliters of water each and when we checked on all of the radish droughts where in very poor health. They were leaning over on the side of the plant and were a very lighter green and looked very dried out and dieing. The floods also did not look very good but were doing a lot better than the radish floods. The onions are also making steady progress in growing and are doing very well and they do not seem to be as affected by the floods and the droughts as the radishes are doing.

oooh good observations guys! You are noticing some "qualitative" (obervational) difference between the drought or the other plants. How about height? 

I think that was a great idea to measure the height of all the plants and calculate the average. Thank you for explaining it to me so well!

I'm excited to see what happens by Monday!

Today we watered all of our controls and all of our floods. We will be watering our droughts on Monday. The controls got 25 milliliters of water and the floods got 40 milliliters of water. The droughts are still the tallest which still doesn't make sense to any of us and the onions have made massive progress with the tallest onion being onion drought number 1 and it is 6 centimeters tall. All of us will be entering our jounals including Noah and Milo which me and Cait noticed that they did not do last Friday so we will make sure that they will do it this time. The droughts are looking a little bit dry and they have slightly changed color to a little lighter green. The floods are also looking a little rough and there growth seems to have slowed down a little bit then it had previously and they have changed color to a more darker green.

The reason we changed how we measure was because if the tallest plant broke, it would not work. We did not water them because we have a pattern of when we water them so we are planning on watering them on Friday. We are using cm. 

Hello! Today we did not work on our plants today but we will tomorrow and we will update you more on them then! I would like to clear up a little bit about why we switched from measuring the tallest to then measuring the average of all of them. We switched because if the tallest plant had Brocken and fallen then that would change the data drastically so in order to make that not happen we switched to the averages. We will be watering our floods and out controls tomorrow as well. All of the controls will be getting 25 ml of water and the floods will be getting 40 ml of water.  We also always measure our plants in centimeters. We are all very excited to keep working with you!

Hi Team,

I know what you did with your plants this morning, but it's not clear in the update that you wrote to your mentor. Can you explain why you are collecting the average height of plants in each pot vs just the tallest plant?

It is a good idea to give your mentor specific details - how much water did you give the plants? 

Also, I'm not seeing a data table upload. I noticed some journals have a data table posted in them, but it isn't clear from the headings if you are collecting average heights or what unit of measurement you are using (mm, cm?). 

Keep up the good work!

Good Morning Ms. Janet, first of all, for Monday, we did the tallest plant, when we were meant to do the average, so, we will do the average for the next ones. Most of them look quite similar, but for one of them, only 1 sprouted! The light they are getting is sitting under a table, so were gonna leave them in the sunlight today, and water the rest, but drought on Friday. 

Today all we did was measure the height of our plants because we had originally messed up and had only done the tallest plant in the pot instead of what we were supposed to do and that was the average of all of the sprouts combinded. We also moved the plants closer to the window so they could get some sunlight which they have not been getting a lot of recently. The onions have also finally sprouted and are still tiny but growing.

Looks good guys! That is very interesting that the drought is growing tallest so far. Hmmm I wonder why that might be? Do they otherwise look pretty similar, aside from height?

I'm curious what kind of light these plants are getting, and how much. Is it natural light from a window? Are all of the pots getting a similar amount of light? Maybe, to be really careful to keep each of the treatments consistent aside from the amount of water it gets, you might want to move the pots each day, just in case one location is warmer, colder, gets more light, less light, etc. of course you will need to do it carefully so you don't damage the plants!

Looking forward to hearing what you see tomorrow!

Today we water all of our plants. The floods got 40 milliliters of water each, the controls got 25 milliliters of water each, and the droughts got 15 milliliters of water each. Then we measured them and all of the radishes had grown a little bit but none of the onions had grown at all. Also something surprising was that the droughts were growing faster than all of the others. The tallest one was the radish drought 2 and it was 9.1 centimeters. All of the plants are at least one centimeter tall besides the onions which have not grown yet. We are able to find the height by measuring the tallest plant in the pot and that being the height. When we say that they are in good condition it means that they are growing and watered and just all around doing good.

I made my data table with what plant I am recording the height of on the top and on the left is the date. I hope that helps explain.

Hi guys,
 

Radishes usually take ~4-5 days to germinate so it's not surprising they haven't yet. I bet by Monday they will. 

Your journals look good so far! I'm a little confused by Caitlin's datatable - why are there three different rows all labeled with each date? One question I do have - if you planted 5 seeds in each pot, how will you find a single height? Will you average the height of the five plants? Measure the highest one? Add the heights together? Be sure to make a note of which you will do.

Also, could you explain a little more what you mean by that "they are in good condition"?

Can't wait to hear how things look on Monday!

We are adding out journals, do I need to change anything about mine?

Hello! Today we all made data tables about how our plants are doing! They were still in good condition so we will be watering them on Monday. We also still have found no growth so far so we are setting them on the windowsill for a little extra sunlight. Tell us if you would like us to change anything about our data tables that could make them even better! 

Sounds good! I guess we have to be patient. I would guess you might see some germination tomorrow or Monday!

Today my group and I checked for growth and found nothing so far. We also watered 40 milliliters of water for the two onion floods and the other two radish floods. The other 8 plants were in a good condition and we cannot water the droughts yet because we need them to dry out a little more first.

Great! Can't wait to hear when your first seeds germinate! Thanks for the updates. 

Hello! We have planted out plants and have not watered them yet but we soaked the soil evenly on all of our plants! We also made a small mistake and we need to plant 6 more plants three more radishes and three more onions because they need to have 2 controls, 2 droughts, and two floods for each. So we will be painting those today and will be sending you pictures about how they turned out!

Hi team,

Thank you for sending the picture and for updating the predictions and design information! It's excited you are starting your project and have seeds in the ground! Did you give them water when you planted them? Did you give them all the same amount? Be sure to record everything you do and everything you see!

Hi Team! Please post to let your mentor know what you did today in class with your project, and be sure to upload the photos (in the files tab) you took after planting. Your pots should be clearly labeled - this will make it a lot easier for you when it is time to collect data and write down your observations in your journals.

Have you decided how long you will wait before starting to give your plants the control, drought and flood amounts? Are you going to wait until the plants have sprouted?

Keep up the good work!

We planted our onion and radish seeds after we soaked the soil. We had 6 pots. Onion control, flood, and drought, and radish control, flood, and drought. We labeled them and put them on a tray to drain.  Do you think our photo is good?

Hello! We have come back from vacation and are ready to get back to work! We changed up our prediction and our background section so that everything makes more sense. We are starting to plant today and will update you more about it tomorrow once it is done and the plants have settled in overnight. 

Great! I think that will improve your experiment to have made those changes!

Another thing I think you could work on today would be your predictions section. You have a ton of good information in the predictions section, but it is more background information about the plants themselves. You did a great job researching those plants! What would you think about moving most of the text from the predictions section up into the background section?

Then, the prediction section is usually written as a sort of "guess" of what you think will happen when you run the experiment. You might want to write it in the format of "if... then.... because". So, what do you think will happen "if" you water the plants more or less than ideal? Why do you think that will happen like that? 

I'll be online for the next hour so feel free to respond if this doesn't make sense!

Hello! Thank you  for being able to write back so quickly! We have looked at it agian and have decided to start watering our radishes every 4 days and giving them .4 cups of water every 4 days. If we put that in ml then it would be 94 ml every 4 days. We have also decided to moniter the sucess we have decided to measure it every day to see if it has grown and to also look at it overall to see if the condition looks good.

Good updates! One question I have  -  are you planning to only water your radish seeds every 9 days? I'm worried they may dry out too much during that time. Could you water them half as much, every 4 days, maybe? Or can you think of a way to keep the soil from drying out too much?

Have you thought about how you will measure the success of each watering treatment?

Hello! We have looked at our prediction and our experimental design agian and we have made some changes to it! We are very glad you enjoyed your hike and we are excited to keep working with you! We will also be away on break all next week and we will probably start planting after that! 

Hi all! I am back - I had a wonderful time hiking but am glad to be back at work and able to catch up with you all. You've done a lot while I was away! I like your research question and I love all the background research you've done on the ideal growing conditions for radishes and for onions! Great job. 

So, the next step will be to work on developing your research design to be like a recipe - what materials will you need to get before you begin? What are the steps you need to take to plant and water the seeds? And finally, how will you measure "success" (by which I mean, who will you know which plants in which watering treatment grow best - number germinating? length of shoot? flavor of radish?)

You mention that onions are rather more complicated to grow, so that will be a good thing for you to keep in mind! Radishes germinate much more quickly and more easily than do onions. 

So the next step for tomorrow I think will be to work on writing the research design to be a recipe! I'll aim to get on tomorrow at 10am or so to answer any questions you might have as you work on your experimental design!

Hello! We have added our research question and our experimental design and wondered what you thought about it. We can change anything that doesn't seem right or do even more research on radishes and onions! Have a great hike! It is also very nice to meet you! We are excited to work with you as we continue on this journey of a science project! It will be fun to see you around! Have a great day!

Hello teams! I just wanted to take a moment to introduce myself. I am Meghan, and I am the PlantingScience liaison for your teams! I work with your teacher and the mentors to make sure that everything is going smoothly. You may see me post from time to time, so now hopefully you will know who I am when you see my name.

A little bit about me- I am a graduate student at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. I am interested in studying how the locations of plants influence the behavior of the organisms that interact with them. Aside from that, I like to read, play board games, and spend time with my family.

I see a lot of great work and conversation happening, and I can't wait to see how your projects turn out :)

Hello! That sounds very fun to do and I hope you enjoy it! We are deciding to do the experiment idea about water! The water will be an experiment that sees how plants react to different circumstances which are saying a flood, drought, and then a normal amount of water to see how these plants will deal with it. Also we will usually respond or talk to you around this time of the day and will usually not respond a lot outside of this hour of around 10:05 to 11:15. We hope you think this is a good idea, have a great hike!

Good morning snowdrops! I just want to let you know that I will be away from internet access today, tomorrow, and Wednesday morning. I'm going hiking in northern Wisconsin! I'll look forward to hearing from you and answering your questions on Wednesday afternoon - in the mean time hopefully your teacher can help answer pressing questions. Sorry for the absence!

-Janet

Hi Team,

When you are thinking of your research questions, remember that we are focusing on seed germination / plant growth. When you are ready to start your experimental design, we have a variety of seeds you can work with: ryegrass, radish, pearl millet, pea, onion, buckwheat and corn. 

How would you test the research ideas that your group has been talking about? See what your mentor thinks about your ideas. What real world problems are you thinking about that relate to your questions?

Keep up the good work! 

Hi all,

I'll respond at least every day, and try to respond as quickly as I can. I might often respond in the evenings, so you'll usually see my messages the next day.

I think those are both great ideas for experiments! I have a feeling it may be easier to manipulate how much water you give the plants rather than temperature, depending what you have available to use in the classroom. For example, if you put them in the refrigerator, it would also mean they didn't get enough light, so it would be hard to know if they grew differently because of the cold or the lack of light.

Do you have any ideas how you would like to manipulate the temperature or water availability?

Hello Ms. Janet. ELA stands for English language arts. We were also wondering, how often will you respond? We have two ideas for our experiment. How would a plant react to too much heat or cold? How would a plant react to less than average or greater than average water? 

Hi Riley, Noah, Cait and Milo! I'm very excited to work with the sensational snowdrops this semester!

You can call me Ms. Janet. Thank you for asking!

Thank you for telling me about yourselves also. I am curious what ELA stands for? A little bit about me - I work with Cornell Cooperative Extension, which is a part of Cornell University that focuses on education and interacting with the community. Specifically for my job I work with fruit growers - so I help apple, pear, blueberry, and other fruit growers to grow healthier fruits. In my free time I like to do anything outdoors - I love running in the woods, cross country skiing, gardening, and hiking with my dog.

You also asked about suggestions for what your project should be. I'm wondering what you've been learning about recently in class, and if there is anything you're curious to learn more about? It would be great for you to be interested and curious about your project topic!

Looking forward to hearing back from you.

Hello Janet van Zoeren, My name is Noah and I'm a part of the sensational Snowdrops my team is very excited to work with you.

Hello Janet van Zoeren, I am Cait from the sensational snowdrops! Some things about me are I like to play basketball and I like to read. Though I like all school subjects, my favorite would have to be ELA. My teammates and I are excited for this project and you are mentoring us.

Good afternoon, Janet van Zoeren, first of all, i am Milo, and i would like to question what you would like to be called? Mrs. Janet, Mrs. Zoeren, Ms. Janet, Ms. Zoeren, Dr. Janet, Dr. Zoeren, or just your first or last name? Well, i like to be called just "Milo" and my favorite subject in school is math, i like basketball, and i dont know alot about plants.

Hello! I'm Riley and I'm part of the Sensational Snowdrops! To get to know me better I enjoy track and cross country! I also love to read and write! We are happy to have you to mentor us and are excited for the future of this project! We are excited to see you around! Except we have one question and that is what you would like to be called, since we want to be respectful. We where also hoping that you could have had some ideas on what our project should be. Have a great rest of your day!