Info
| Explore | Dear science mentor, two of us know quite a bit about plants the others not so much. One person has a garden and knows how to grow plants. Another group member has a green thumb and knows a little bit about plants. We know plants get energy from photosynthesis and make glucose as their form of... |
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| Research Question | We want to test if plants can survive growing in different things other than soil. We are going to have two plants that will grow normally in the soil. We will take care of these plants normally. The other four plants will be growing in wet cotton balls and wood chips instead of soil. These... |
| Predictions | We think that the cotton balls will be able to grow the plants, while the wood chips won't or won't as much. If we grow plants in soil, cotton balls, and wood chips, we think the soil plants will grow normally. We think the cotton ball plants are going to grow a little bit slower. We also think... |
| Experimental Design | We are going to have six different pots. Two of the pots are going to have normal planting soil, with four pea seeds in one pot, and five onion seeds in the other. In the next four pots, two will have cotton balls as soil, and the other two will have wood chips as soil. These pots will also have... |
| Conclusion | Plants can grow in things other than soil. In this experiment, we tested to see if onions and pea seeds can sprout and grow in different pots filled with soil, cotton balls, and wood chips. We had two control pots (soil), one with 4 pea seeds, and the other with 5 onion seeds. Same with cotton... |
| About this Project | The Lovely Lotuses demonstrated good teamwork during their investigation. They did an excellent job communicating with their mentor through the blog and use of graphs and data tables, and their journals. -- Rebecca Buzzell, Teacher |
Updates
Hi Team!
Congrats on all your hard work and great experiment!
I read through all of your journals and they're great - I don't have many comments, except that you should include all of the measurements as well as the average. They can be in the same or separate tables. That will give the reader the ability to look at the numbers and see how similar they are. For example, 3 plants that all grew to 10 cm would have an average of 10 cm, but so would 3 plants that grew to 1 cm, 2 cm, and 27 cm. They're very different! In the future you'll learn ways to report on those variations, but for now, just letting the reader know what the measurements were is great.
As for your graph, it looks great, but you might want to consider splitting up the onion from the pea measurements into two separate graphs. We don't expect onions and peas to grow the same way, so we don't need to compare them to each other. Separating them out will make it a little easier for the reader to see what's happening. Your x-axis is labelled "plants" but it should be labelled dates. It might be more valuable for the reader if it were labelled in days instead (like day 1, day 2, etc.) because the time it took to grow is probably more important than the dates themselves. But it really does look great and shows exactly what you want it to show!
As for what might happen if you let them grow: I think you'll have problems if you let them grow much longer. Mary mentioned that they would need bigger pots. That's right, but think about what a bigger pot will do - it will give the plants more soil to grow into. Why do plants grow into soil? To get nutrients! Seeds have everything a plant needs to sprout until it can establish itself and then start making sugars through photosynthesis and get minerals and other nutrients from the ground. The plants growing in soil would be fine in the long run because the potting soil you used has minerals in it. However, cotton balls have no minerals at all, and wood chips might have some but they aren't available to the plant. So, if you want to continue to grow the plants in cotton balls and wood chips, they'll need to have fertilizer added so that the plants can get everything they need. Even if you kept growing them in potting soil long enough, they would eventually soak up all the nutrients in it and you'd still have to fertilize them.
I had a really great time being your mentor. The whole group as been really fun and I love that you've been asking questions and thinking about what is happening and what could happen. I really hope this has given you a good chance to think more about plants and what they really mean to us. And how amazing they are!!! I wish you all the best of luck and I hope you continue to appreciate the plants all around you!
(The graph I made)
Hi Kate!
I would just like to say thank you for being our mentor throughout this project, and taking time out of your day to work with us. It was super fun to do, and we all really enjoyed it! You gave us a lot of good feedback and advice for our plants, and we really appreciate it. Thanks so much again.
-Mary
Thank you, Kate!
-Brook
Hi Kate!
Today is the final day for our project. We disposed of our onions (They're dead), and Cameron will be taking the pea plants home. We are going to upload our graphs we created, upload our journals, write the conclusion, and upload one last picture. To answer your questions, we don't think the pea plants would continue to grow even if they did have a good amount of water and sunlight. This is because they didn't have enough room in their very small pot to keep growing. If they did have enough room, we think that they would grow very well and quickly even if they were planted in cotton balls or wood chips. Eventually, it would be better to plant them outside if possible, and we think they would do very well. We don't have any questions about our project that we can think of. The only thing we would have wanted to do differently was to get a scheduled routine to water and take care of our plants. We also would have wanted to get our plants bigger pots to further prove that plants can grow in other substances like cotton balls and wood chips. We were able to prove that plants can grow in cotton balls and wood chips, and our project was overall successful apart from a couple hiccups.
Thank you so much Kate!
-The Team
Hi Team!
Thanks for uploading your photo and journals!
It's too bad about the issues at your school last week, but guess what? Scientists working in the real world hit roadblocks like this all the time and they just figure out how to adapt. In your case, it probably means that you only count the onion data until the last time you could water them. That's ok! Scientists report findings they were unable to complete all the time!
I have another question for you to think about for your pea plants: If they had enough water and sunlight, do you think they'd continue to grow as well as they have been?
As you wrap up, do you have any other questions you want to ask? Is there anything you wish you had done differently? Or that you would want to try for another experiment in the future?
Hi Kate! Thank you for your feedback! To answer your questions we think that since we weren't here for a week (other than Monday), our plants were dry(the soil, cotton balls, and wood chips). we think that the water was the reason they were growing and the amount of sunlight they got. We think that they will not grow if we left them for a couple of weeks, they would most likely die.
- The Team
Hi Kate!
Unfortunately, we weren't able to attend school last week due to some issues. This means we haven't checked on our plants in a whole week! The onions have pretty much disappeared apart from a small shriveled up sprout in the cotton ball pot. The peas seem to be doing okay, but they are definitely on the droopy side. The skewers actually don't seem to be holding up the pea sprouts very well. We made sure to water all of our plants, and record our data. Hopefully we'll get our pictures and journals up soon, and Izzy is going to type out the answers we thought of for your questions in a minute!
-The Team
Hi Team!
Thanks for uploading your picture!
Your peas are looking awesome!
I know you weren't expecting the ones in cotton balls and woodchips to grow much at all, but here they are! Do you have any thoughts on what caused them to grow? Do you think they'll continue to grow if you left them for a few weeks or months more? Why or why not?
Hi Kate!
Thank you for your feedback, the plants are all pretty similar, the difference is really just the amount of sunlight they get and how much water they get.
-The Team
Hi Kate!
Thank you for your feedback, the plants are all pretty similar, the difference is really just the amount of sunlight they get and how much water they get.
-The Team
Hi Team,
Thanks for keeping me updated on your progress!
It's ok that your plants shriveled for a few days. Just make sure you clearly record that happened in your journals.
Just by looking at the plants (not the measurements), do you notice anything different about the plants in each of the treatments? Do you have any ideas about why there might be differences?
As for the type of graph, I think a line graph would probably be best - it will clearly show the height of the plants over time and the reader can easily compare them.
Let me know if you have any more questions as you finish up!
Hi Kate, We are making a graph when we're done with collecting all our data for our project. Do you have any recommendations for the type of graph we should use? Thank you.
-Brook
Hi Kate,
We took a break from our plants for a few days, and it definitely shows. While the pots were in the sunny window, they shriveled up and are not looking too good. We weren't able to water our plants for about three days, and the sunlight didn't help with the dryness. We made sure to water all of our plants well today, and recorded our data in the table. We are only going to continue this project for a week or so more, and we don't know how much the plants will be able to grow in that time. We are also going to upload our journals today. We'll be back Monday to check on our plants!
-The Team
Hi Kate!
Yesterday, we measured the pea sprouts before we wrapped them around the skewers. It might be the fact that the pea sprouts were drooping over a little bit more than the day before. The plants do get rather thirsty over the weekend when we are unable to water them. It makes sense that the cells would shrink over the weekend and they would appear smaller on the Monday we get back. Along with that, we've been putting the plants in an area that doesn't get a lot of sunlight. Looking back at our tables, the few times we've put them in the window they seem to have grown more. We think that our plants need more sunlight and we are going to try and put them in a sunny window today. We watered all of our plants, recorded our data and observations, and we're planning to upload all four of our journals on Friday.
-The Team
Hi Kate!
Thanks for your feedback. We are working on fixing our journals right now. We are still having trouble getting Cameron's journal up. We decided we are not going to keep track of the amount of leaves growing, and focus more on the overall height of each sprout. We got skewers for our pea sprouts, and put them in the pot and wrapped the pea sprouts around them tying them loosely with string. We noticed that some of the sprouts, (specifically the peas in the soil pot), have decreased in height. We think that this is because they are running out of room in their small pot, and because of how much they're growing, they need to be watered over the weekend. This still seems strange that the height would be decreasing instead of them not growing at all. The other plants also seem to be growing slower than normal. Do you have any ideas on why this is happening? We watered all of our plants and recorded the heights in our tables.
-The Team
Hi Team,
Interesting observation! Did you measure the sprouts again after you put the skewers in? If so, the height would look lower if you wrapped the plants around the skewers because some of the height is really going sideways into the wrapping.
If the plants are thirsty, they can also seem shorter because the lack of water makes cells shrink.
As for plants growing more slowly - that's also a really great observation. What do you think would cause a plant to grow more slowly? Hint: think about what plants need to grow.
I look forward to hearing more about your plants!
Hi Brook,
Thanks for uploading your journal!
In your data table, I would like to see the titles tell me if they are onion or pea seeds - as a reader, it's hard for me to figure out which one is which when they are just labeled "wood chips 1" and "wood chips 2" etc.
It's great that you've started to calculate the averages, but I think it's important to also note how many are growing - otherwise your audience doesn't know if only 1 sprouted or if all 4 did.
Otherwise it's looking great! Keep up the great work!
Hi Izzy,
Thanks for updating your journal!
In your data table, you have the treatments listed as "cotton ball 1" and "cotton ball 2" etc. I think it would be easier for your audience to read if you included which one is pea plants and which one is onion so they can interpret the results more easily.
I'm also a little confused about the entries on March 15: some say "there was only one growth" but there is no measurement. The type of entry you have should be consistent through the table.
It's looking really great, though! I'm looking forward to seeing what conclusions you can make at the end!
Hi Mary,
Thanks for uploading your journal!
It's looking great, I just have a 2 comments:
1. you said the number of leaves is increasing, but you haven't shown me anywhere that you've been counting them. If you weren't going to use number of leaves as a way of measuring plant growth, then it's totally fine and a perfectly reasonable observation! If you are planning to use it as a measure of plant growth, then you should be counting them daily and entering it into your data table (or a separate data table).
2. You mention in entry 6 that "all the plants have sprouted." I think you mean at least one plant from each treatment has sprouted- at first I thought you meant every seed had sprouted. It's important to be really careful in your wording so that other scientists reading your work will know what happened.
Great work!
Hi Kate!
All of our plants have sprouted so far. We watered all of our plants today, and are working on the averages in our data table. We are also currently trying to fix up any mistakes in our journals and we are going to upload Brook and Cameron's. The plants seem to be doing well, and hopefully we'll get a picture up. The pea sprouts have gotten very tall and are starting to droop over. Do you know of any way we can support them without damaging them?
-The Team
Hi Mary,
You can try to support them with a wooden skewer - you know the kind you use on the barbeque? Or anything tall and skinny will work! Peas will try to grab on and twirl around things so they're not meant to grow without supports.
I think the experiment is going better than expected. I do think we could have done better growing plants not like onions but something else instead of onions. I say this because onions grow quite slow and not too tall but the peas grow fast and well. We are also looking forward to the results. Thank you!
-Brook
Hi Team,
Thanks for keeping me updated. Your plants are looking great!
Do you have any thoughts now that your experiment is well under way? Is there anything you wish you had done differently or other things you think would be neat to try in the future?
I'm looking forward to seeing your results!
And remember you can ask me anything about plants or science or being a scientist - anything you're curious about at all!
Hi Team!
A couple things: I only see journals uploaded for Mary and Izzy. Everyone needs to upload their updated journal every Friday. If you name the journal the same thing, it will upload your most current version that you've downloaded, and will have all your entries from the start of the project to the current entry.
For your data table, when you go to graph your data, it is going to be easier if you average all the heights for each column together. So for control 1, add 17, 11.7. 19.1, and 20.2 and then divide the total by 4 to get your average height. Your column headings should have the unit of measurement; don't type in unit of measurements or other data in the data table.
Your update posts to your mentor look good! It is very helpful to share what you are doing and what you are seeing happen with the plants!
Keep up the good work!
Hi Kate, the plants have grown quite a bit in the past few days. Today, the heights for control 1 are 17cm 11.7cm, 19.1cm 20.2cm. Woodchips 2 has not sprouted yet but it think it should soon. Woodchips one however did sprout a couple days ago and is 7.7cm. Control 2 has started to to have some sproutes and their heights are 1.3cm, 1.1cm, 0.5cm, 0.5cm. Cotton balls 1 has grown to 15cm, 15.5cm and 14cm. Cotton balls 2 has grown to 1.3cm. By the way Izzy would like to tell you how she´s working on her journal and likes your feedback.
-Team
Hi Team!
I'm so excited that you have so many plants growing!!
Are they doing what you expected? Do you think it will change if you give it more time? How long do you have to keep your plants growing?
I'm not sure if it's just the angle of the picture or if it's the plants itself, but it looks to me like the pea plants are all leaning one way, probably towards the window. Plant stems can get weak when that happens, so if you can, try to turn them a half turn or so every day so they grow a little straighter - they'll be overall healthier that way.
Keep me posted on what you see in the next few days!
Hi Kate!
The plants aren't entirely doing what we expected them to do. We didn't really think anything would sprout out of the wood chips because they don't absorb water very well. The pea seeds did actually have one sprout out of the wood chips. We have yet to find any sprouts from the onion seeds in the wood chips. We also didn't expect any of the seeds to grow so rapidly. The pea seeds are growing much faster than we anticipated. We also think that the plants are going to grow more if we give them more time. Eventually, they will run out of room in those tiny pots and most likely die. We are going to keep them growing throughout the end of the month, so probably a couple more weeks. If we can, we would really like to try to get them some bigger pots to keep growing. We don't know if we'll be able to do that though. The pea sprouts are definitely leaning towards the sun so we'll make sure we rotate them so they can grow a bit straighter. Thanks for the feedback Kate!
-The Team
On the image below, the Onion seeds are on top. As you can see, there is not much growth, but we do have 2 small growths in the control (soil) one is 0.5 cm and the other is 0.2 cm. On the contrary, the pea seeds are doing great, all 3 pots have 1 or more growth. In the control (soil) we have 4 growths, the tallest is 17.5 cm and the shortest is 7.5 cm. in the wood chips, we have one growth, it is 3.5 cm tall. Finally, the cotton balls have 3 growths, the tallest being 10.8 cm tall, and the shortest being 9 cm tall.
Thanks for the update, Cameron.
Are these results what you expected? Did you expect to see anything happen in the wood chips? Or as much as you do in the cotton balls?
How do you think the experiment is going?
Hi Kate!
Izzy is absent today so we don't think she'll be able to work on her journal until she comes back. We also won't be able to check on our plants tomorrow. A lot of our plants have grown over the weekend. The pea seed that wasn't fully covered happened to be the second shortest out of the four that sprouted in the soil pot for the pea seeds. If that does affect the measurements, we could always dig it up at the end of the project or whenever you would like us to. We are still working on uploading everyone's journals. I'm about to update my journal in the files tab so you can see all of the measurements and information we collected today! I'm pretty sure it should be labeled 'Mary's Journal (1)'. We could also try to explain it a bit better in the updates/chat if it's too confusing.
-Mary
Hi Mary,
Thanks for uploading your journal. I think you're making really good observations and keeping really good track of everything you see and do to the plants. This is really important because you want other scientists to be able to do the same experiment.
Keep up the great work!
Hi Izzy!
Thanks for uploading your journal!
I'm glad you're putting your observations into a table, but I'd like to see a little more detail. You said in your methods that you'll measure the plants, but your observations just say "grew". Could you add some more detail so I have a better idea of what's happening with your plants, please?
I'm really looking forward to seeing how your experiment turns out!
Hi Kate!
I updated the file of my science journal as a PDF in the files tab. Each of us each have our own that we are working on throughout the project. We are currently trying to upload each of ours now. Hopefully they will all be uploaded when you read this!
-Mary
Hi Mary!
Thanks for uploading your journal!
Do you think your measurement will be affected by the pea that wasn't totally covered with soil? Do you think that it will look like it grew longer because you can measure more of it because it isn't covered with soil? It's totally ok if that happened. It might not matter if the others don't grow at all, or you could think about it at the end of your experiment and dig them up to see if there is any difference. It's also a great thing to think about in the future if you were to repeat the experiment or give instructions to another scientist to repeat it.
I love how detailed your observations are! I can't wait to see how it turns out!
The left bin is peas, we have 3 growths. the right one is Onions, we have no growths. (in the picture below)
Hi Team!
Thanks for the picture! Keep an eye on your plants and let me know as soon as you see anything. Or if you have any questions that come to mind in the mean time!
Hi Kate!
We weren't able to check on our plants yesterday, and we're having trouble uploading the pictures. We don't have any questions currently. So far, nothing has poked out of the soil. We watered the wood chips in both pots, and we watered the soil pots a little bit too. The cotton balls managed to stay pretty moist. We'll hopefully get the pictures to you soon!
-The Team
Hi team!!
I'm so excited to hear you've started planting!
Did any questions spring to mind while you were setting up your experiment? Either questions about your experiment itself or about other plant-related things?
If you haven't already, make sure you make some kind of mark on your pots. Once your plants start growing and you are measuring them, it will be a lot easier to be sure you're measuring the same ones if you have a mark on the pot to relate them to.
I look forward to seeing the pictures soon!
Kate
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 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.
Keep up the good work!
Hi Kate!
We hope you had a nice week.
We're going to upload pictures hopefully tomorrow because we ended up plant our seeds today.
We're excited to watch them grow!
-The Team
Hi Kate, we're back from vacation. We are planting the seeds today or soon. We will keep you updated on the planting.
Hi Kate!
We're enjoying this project too, and thank you for the advice!
We were planning to get the wood chips from our school playground. If that doesn't work, we could try to get them from a package. We have also decided to change the amount of water for each plant to keep them moist. We agreed this would be better because we really want to see if the plants will sprout, and we worry that they wouldn't grow in the wood chips without the right amount of water. The pots we have are definitely on the smaller side, so we think we're going to do 4 pea seeds and 5 onion seeds.
We're excited to get started on our project!
-The team
Hi Team,
I think this is a good idea. The three treatments you're using will accept water very differently so I think it's good to just give them the water they need so you can really test what's happening with the different soil substances.
When you collect the wood chips from your playground, try to get them from an area that is less used so they're not so full of stuff from people's shoes. If possible, I would also suggest trying to collect them as soon as possible and bringing them inside and spreading them out to dry - that might help kill any bacteria or fungi that are growing on them from outside.
I look forward to seeing how this turns out!
Hi, Kate we´re starting vacation on Saturday and coming back the Monday after that week. Have a lovely week!
-Brook
Thanks for the update! I hope you all have a great vacation! If you are in an area that's not too cold, I hope you can all get outside a bit and check out some plants! I'll be happy to answer any questions you have when you get back!
Hi team!
I'm really thrilled with how much work and thought you've put into your project already!
My only question for you right now is where did the wood chips come from? Are they from a package or did someone bring them from home?
Another thing to consider: the amount of water. You have predicted that the soil and cotton balls will hold water while the wood chips won't. That's a good prediction. Great job in looking up the amount of water the plants need, but the information you have is more for growing in a field - in a pot water doesn't escape so much so you don't have to follow it as strictly. A good rule of thumb for sprouting is that the soil should stay moist. It's OK to change the amount of water you use partway through as long as you explain it in your results. And it's OK to give the different treatments different amounts of water if that's what they need - you are testing if and how well they will grow, not the amount of water it takes to grow. I know you've probably talked about experimental controls in your class and how important it is to keep everything as close to the same as possible, but there's not a lot point in saying plants won't grow in wood chips if all the water just drains right through the pot and never reaches the seeds. So it's up to you if you want to keep the same amount of water in each or if you just want to put in enough water to keep the seeds moist. Either was is OK, you just have to record what you did so that future scientists can replicate your experiment.
To answer the question about how many seeds in each pot - that's a great question. It depends on the size of your pots. If they're smallish, then 6 pea seeds is probably too many - if you want to keep them growing until they get some leaves, they'll need a lot of space for their roots so they might run out of room. 3 or 4 might be a better number. For the onions, because they're smaller seeds and smaller plants, 6 might be OK. Try to imagine how big they might get by the time you're done and decide the number of seeds based on that and the pot size.
Please post any more questions you have! This is looking like a super neat project!!
Hi Kate, are group was wondering how many seeds we should put in each pot. We were thinking about 6-10 seeds per pot. Let us know what you think about the amount of seeds and the amount of pots.
-Brook
Hi Kate! Thank you for your feedback! We got messed up with our communication on redoing our question. One of our members was writing one thing after I sent in the blog post, and I did not get the time to edit the post. We will be doing 2 pots of soil, 2 pots of cotton balls, and 2 pots of wood chips. One out of the two will have an onion seed and the other one will have a pea seed(sorry about my wording). Another member is writing our predictions, we are thinking pretty much the same thing.
- The team
Hi Kate! Thanks for the feedback. This is what we have planned out so far on a separate document.
Onion Seeds- 11 to 12 hours of sunlight for onions and onions need “irrigate to a depth of an inch (2.5 cm.) once a week”- Google. onion seeds should be planted 12-15 inches apart.
Pea Seeds- they need full sunlight to grow and need ”Soak the soil when watering, to a depth of at least one inch each week during the growing season.”- Google. Pea seeds should be planted 1-3 inches apart.
We are going to have six different pots. Two of the pots are going to have normal planting soil, with six pea seeds in one pot, and six onion seeds in the other. In the next four pots, two will have cotton balls as soil, and the other two will have wood chips as soil. These pots will also have six onion seeds in one, and six pea seeds in the other. All of these plants will be cared for and treated the same way, the soil will just be different. We are going to see if these plants are able to grow successfully by first seeing if they sprout. If they do sprout, will they continue to grow? We will be measuring the plant's height, the amount of leaves it has (if any), and the overall size of the plant if it does grow in these certain materials as the replacement soil.
Materials:
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Cotton balls
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Planting soil
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Wood chips
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Water
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18 Onion seeds
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18 Pea seed
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6 pots
Hi team.
I love your new research question!
I have a few comments about your design - the description says you will have 6 pots but you only describe 4 (2 with soil and one each with cotton balls and wood chips). Do you mean two of each?
When you set up your pots, I would recommend making a mark on the pot somewhere so that when you take measurements, you know which plant is being measured each time.
How long will you be able to keep your experiment running for?
Do you have any predictions? Do you think one treatment will do better than the others? Which one and why? Why did you choose cotton balls and wood chips?
Do you have any other questions or curiosities before you get started?
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 :)
Thank you for your feedback! We decided to change our question to can plants survive in other things that are not soil. We want to try two normal plants and two non normal plants. The two non normal plants would have one with wood chips instead of soil and another plant with wet cotton balls instead of soil. Thank you for your time!
- The team
Hi Team!
This is a really cool idea!
Some things to think about:
-how long does a plant have to grow before it has roots or leaves that you can damage? How much time do you have for your project?
-what kind of damage are you thinking of? There are plenty of kinds of damage that happen to plants in nature and from humans, so there are lots of ways you can take this, but you should think about a specific problem plants face and consider damaging the plants to mimic that.
-how many plants will you use? You said one plant damaged and one plant not to compare, but are you sure one is enough?
-how will you measure your results? You said "to see if it would grow" but that's too vague for a scientist! Will you measure the height? The number of leaves? The size of leaves? There are lots of things to think about here and it's best to think through the entire experiment very carefully before you start - it's a lot easier to make changes to your design now than it is once you've started!
Keep up the great work! Keep brainstorming! Ask any questions you can think of so we can work them all out.
Happy planting!
Kate
Hi, My name is Cameron, My favorite subject in school is Art. My favorite plant is Foxglove! I cant wait to do this science project with you!
Hi Cameron,
I was never good at art but I always thought it was fun!
I think foxglove is really neat. It's a biennial, so it takes 2 years to grow to the flowers you see - the first year it just grows leaves and stores energy so that the second year it can grow those beautiful flowers!
I look forward to working with you too!
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? If we are thinking in terms of increasing food production, or growing plants in areas that are experiencing drought, how would that tie in to testing plants with damaged roots / leaves?
Keep up the good work!
Hi again Kate! Our team has narrowed down our ideas. We wanted to test if plants could survive without soil, but another group is already testing that. Instead, we wanted to see if plants could grow and survive with damaged roots and leaves. We would use two plants. One that grows normally, and the other we would damage to see if it could grow. We're excited to get started on our project once we have figured out what we're going to do!
Some testable questions:
- Can some plants survive without soil?
- Can certain plants survive without water?
- How do different views of sunlight affect the plant?
- How do damaged roots affect the plant?
- Do different amounts of carbon dioxide affect the plants growth?
- Do different interactions with the plant affect it in any way?
- How long can a normal plant survive without water?
Hi Mary,
Those are all great questions! And they relate really well to a lot of real considerations we have for growing plants. Have you started to narrow down your ideas? It's a good idea to think about what you have the equipment to do - for example, I don't think you'd be able to alter the amount of carbon dioxide your plants are growing in without some really special equipment.
Keep brainstorming and keep me posted! And ask me any questions you have along the way!
Hi, my name is Izzy. My favorite plant is the rose plant or the lotus flower plant. ELA is my favorite school subject and I can't wait to get to know you!
Hi Izzy,
I completely understand why you love lotuses - they're beautiful! Did you know that scientists have grown lotuses from seeds that are over 1000 years old?? That's pretty amazing!
I'm excited to work with you!
Hi, I am Brooklynn my favriote plant is tomatoes. My favirote subject in shcool is social studys. I am exited to get to know you and create this project in science class.
Hi Brooklyn,
I love tomatoes too! Last year I grew 11 kinds of tomatoes because I love them so much! I can't even name a favourite because they're all so delicious.
I'm excited to work with you too!
Hi! I'm Mary. I can't really pick a favorite plant. My favorite subject is science. I don't know a ton about plants, but I do have quite a few. I'm excited to get started on our project.
Hi Mary,
I can't blame you for not being able to pick a favourite plant - I have so many of them!
Science was one of my favourite subjects in school, too, but I also loved music and actually studied music in university before I went over to biology. There are so many cool things to study in science!
I'm looking forward to working with you!
Hi team!
My name is Kate and I'll be your mentor for this project.
I live in British Columbia, Canada, beside a very deep lake in a beautiful valley. My background was studying how small mammals (like squirrels, voles, and mice) transport truffles (a type of underground fungus) from mature forests into areas that have been clearcut or had a forest fire. I am really interested in how different members of an ecosystem interact - every time I learn something new it seems like there's 10 times more to learn!
I'm really excited to work with you on this project. As we go along, I'm happy to answer any questions you have about plants in general or what it's like to study science or work in the field. Also let me know any questions you have about your experiment!
Kate