Info
| Explore | We understand process photosynthesis and understand that plants both need and produce glucose which is the main idea of photosynthesis. We also know that the plants need sunlight, CO2, O2, H2O, Nutrients which is found within the soil. Some plants can produce fruits while others don ´ t. They can... |
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| Research Question | Do traits that are the most common benefit the plant? How are the plant genes affected by the environment and life cycle? Such as color and length We came up with this research question based on our activities outside and our brain storming questions prior. |
| Predictions | we think that if our high fertilizer were to grow we believe it would have grown faster than the low fertilizer did and since we replanted hopefully soon enough we ´ ll know for sure. The reasoning behind this is because fertilizer improves the supply of nutrients in the soil, directly affecting... |
| Experimental Design | We will test how the nutrients affect the plant by having a control and test variable, control being low fertilizer and test being high fertilizer. However, UV lights, temperature, CO2, and H2O will be in constant conditions. |
| Conclusion | Can phenotypes be affected by a changing environment? Yes, from our 2 sets of plants we have seen a big difference between the high fertilizer and low. We predicted that since fertilizer supplies nutrients and the soil and roots help retain water it would help the plant be healthier and live... |
| About this Project | This team showed a great understanding of the material throughout the session, exhibited in their info section. -- Jes Szetela, Liaison |
Updates
Thank you for the feedback it has helped greatly! Unfortunately we cannot put the averages for our graphs because we did not take those measurements as we were on spring break. The Leaf & Stem Traits are supposed to be totals, we will try to work on it so it is more clear.
I love all of your data and graphs! I agree with your general conclusions, especially that the leaf and stem color amounts were generally similar ratios between the two treatments. The distribution of your plant heights looks very similar (normally distributed, as we'd say), but the high fertilizer treatment has some individuals with longer leaves and taller height, and thus a larger range than the low fertilizer treatment (exciting!) I think there might be a truly meaningful (statistically significant) difference in some of these traits based on fertilizer treatment. Did you all calculate any summary or descriptive statistics (like averages, variance etc.) from your data? This might help you to make conclusions more easily about the effect of fertilizer amounts on your various traits. You can also see how every individual plant was unique, even when in the same environment. That variation between individuals- and determining if the variation seen based on the fertilizer treatment is bigger than the general variation expected between the individuals- is key to biology experiments. Its one of the coolest, but hardest, things to figure out when looking at data! Looking at average values next to each other makes it easier. I'm unsure if your Leaf & Stem Traits blue and purple graphs are showing averages, or totals. Happy to answer any questions! Good work!
What we can see from both of the graphs is that the most common leaf and stem color for both high and low fertilizer is Non-purple stem & Green leaves. However it is only that leaf stem color where high fertilizer has more but for the other colors for leaf and stem low fertilizer has more.
These two graphs represent the leaf length in both high and low fertilizer along with the plant heights being different in the high and low fertilizer. We believe that this data can be used to answer the question "can the enviornment affect the traits in a plant" we believe yes.
This is a part of the data we collected and what we can conclude from both of these graphs is that in the high fertilizer we can see a huge increase compared to the low fertilizer meaning the high fertilizer is producing more offsprings.
Hello! sorry for the late response we are currently creating projects with all the evidence we've gathered and we are now creating a claim. We do think the low fertilizer completes its life cycle faster while in the high it slows it down while also enhancing its traits such as heights and the 2nd true leaf length. We also noticed that in our high fertilizer that we now have 3 flowers with purple stems instead of 1.
Hello! sorry for the late response we are currently creating projects with all the evidence we've gathered and we are now creating a claim. We do think the low fertilizer completes its life cycle faster while in the high it slows it down while also enhancing its traits such as heights and the 2nd true leaf length. We also noticed that in our high fertilizer that we now have 3 flowers with purple stems instead of 1.
A few updates we made today, we observed and measured our plants, most of the adequate seem fairly stable and alive except number 6 which we can assume is dying or already we will keep an eye on it till further notice though. The low fertilizer defiently still seems more on the dead side of the two.
Interesting! Are you saying that low fertilizer plants were more likely to flop over and die? Or did they just complete their life cycle faster and die after their seeds were ripe (these are annual plants that do not typically continue living long after their seeds drop I believe)...
Hi, sorry we took a bit to respond but we have worked on quite a lot this week by observing our plants, discovering new structures, and measuring traits. and learning how plants reproduce. We looked for trichomes in our plants and so far we have discovered very few on each plant only between 2-0. As a group, we also learned about new structures in the plant including ovary, anther, stigma, and more. The measurements we have taken are not quite done yet as we have yet to compare them to our control but we should be done with those by next week. What we have currently learned about plant reproduction is that like many other living things, they have eggs and sperm. The eggs in this case are stored in the ovaries and they require sperm which is the pollen to produce seeds inside the fruits that the plant gives.
Awesome! My college students are always surprised to learn that plants have sperm & egg too Its so exciting that you all got to see the plants all the way through their life cycle. I wonder if your fertilizer treatment sped up or slowed down either group's life cycle, in addition to impacting other aspects of growth?
Hi everyone! I was away from my computer for a week, giving a research talk to colleagues in Costa Rica (and then botanizing with friends in the mountains for a few days- the best!) I'm excited to hear what you found after your plants had more time to grow and develop :)
It is only the high fertilizer where the plastic is in the way of its growth. We are currently re-seeding our high fertilizer and we will be taking a week break from our experiment so hopefully within that time frame we will see a difference. However, with our low fertilizer we are noticing that seed 5 is really small and not growing as much as the others it may just be taking longer to grow but it is something we have observed. We also hope they accept your proposal!
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You might find it interesting that I, too, am studying the impact of high and low fertilizer (especially the nitrogen part) on plants in my greenhouses and with my friends at the New York Botanical Garden and the University of Connecticut. This week we are finishing writing our National Science Foundation grant proposal to request money from the federal government to do the work (and pay our students, including high school and undergraduates!) We are interested in seeing how plants use nitrogen and cycle nitrogen in their ecosystems. Keep your fingers crossed that our grant is chosen for funding, after it is reviewed by other scientist volunteers later this spring!
Ms. Jabaily, we are currently observing plants where we have control and a test. What we are changing is the amount of nutrients within the soil. There is one where we have low fertilizer (control) and another with high fertilizer (test). Unfortunately we are noticing our low fertilizer is growing while our high fertilizer is not. We think this most likely is caused by the plastic might be in the way of its growth. The plastic was originally there to organize the seeds however when placing the soil it may have stopped its growth or slowed it down. However, we've also observed more about the purple pigment and noticed it slightly fades from the stem and stays on the leaf at least from what we’ve seen so far.
Thank you for this very clear explanation! Is the plastic impacting the growth just on the high fertilizer, or is it an issue for both groups? Hopefully you can remove it somehow or redo it so you know that your experiment is truly testing fertilizer and not being confounded (confused) by other variables as you mention. Its one of the hardest parts of science- controlling all you can so there is just the test variable! Interesting observation about concentration of the purple pigment in the leaves instead of the stem! Purple might be serving as a protection for the green pigments in the leaf that are photosynthesizing. Plants have other colorful pigments (oranges, yellows, purples) that keep other colors of light from hurting the green chlorophyll molecules that do the photosynthesizing. Keep up the good work!
Ms.Jabaily, we have finished observing our seeds and have made several observations concerning the seedlings. So far, some of the observations we have made are about their color, the growth, and other physical traits. For example, seedling 13 has the darkest shade of purple and seedling 5 has had the most growth so far. We also noted that some of the seeds that were wrinkled turned out to be the purple colored seedlings although we have yet to find out why they turn purple in the first place. Our prediction at the moment is the purple might be beneficial since it so common and since dark colors absorb light more.
I love your thoughts about purple being beneficial! In many plants, pigments like purples, oranges, and reds can often serve multiple purposes that benefit the plants depending on what part we are considering. Pigment in leaves and stems can serve as a sunblock, to help deal with excessive UV light and pigments in flower petels serve to communicate to pollinators. We study that here in Colorado where the same species is found at different elevations. Higher up where there is more UV you often see more of the pigment in the leaves, etc. In this case, your seeds were bred to differ in predictable ways for the purposes of experiments like this. You might think about what would happen if the plants were allowed to grow up, flower, and set seeds. How might the purple trait pass on into the seeds and the seedlings in the next generation? Might purple coloration impact who survives, and would it depend on the environment? I can't wait to see what you find next!
Those are some big, important research questions! Considering how genes and environment interact to make the traits that we see is a BIG area of biological study, in all creatures (including people!) If the environment you grow the plants in is all the same (to the best of our understanding), to what can you attribute changes that you see?
Hi Ms. Jabaily, Currently, we have started to observe our seeds and they have sprouted to reveal stems that are colored purple and some that are colored green. We also see that this affects the leaf color, which is the same color as the stem. As a group, we observed that the darker colored seeds had more purple stems compared to the lighter colored seeds, which had more green stems. We saw that 13 had the most purple stem with purple and green leaves, which is odd because the other seeds we have contain a stem and leaf of the same color. We also saw seemed 1 stem grew in almost a twirl.
Great observations! You paint a very clear, comprehensive picture of variation in your population. Do you think that the purple pigment is beneficial to the plants at all, and at what point in their lifecycle? How could you test this? Post a seedling picture if you can!
Hello Ms. Jabaily, today we observed our seeds numbering our seeds 1 -14 we noticed our most noticeably different seed was number 13 because it had more wrinkles then the rest as well as what seemed to be almost a look alike to a hair in the seed. As well as half light brown and half dark brown in appearance. Every single seed looked different in their own ways.
Hello! I love these careful, specific observations One of the most important differences between biology and other natural sciences (like physics, chemistry, etc.), is that we know that every single individual organism is different in some way from all others. We are all genetically unique at some level, and so variation is inherent in every living system, and in every organism. Its the role of scientists in part to figure out how much variation that we see in our experiments is because of whatever condition we vary, versus how much variation is just part of the natural variation in all of life. Keep good notes on seed 13 to see if any of those differences matter in what you will measure in your experiments! Can you think of any reason why a seed would be more wrinkly than others?
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Hi everyone! I hope you are having a great start to your work I assume you are working with Brassica plants? I have used them in experiments with my college classes. A long time ago, we tried an experiment to see how the plants would respond to herbivores. We introduced caterpillar larvae that specifically eat Brassicas- they ate everything and we had no plants to measure! I changed the experiment later to mimic the caterpillar damage with a hole punch to the leaves instead. Less fun than the caterpillars, but also less gross with more plants left to measure :)
Hi I'm Jose, I'm excited about this project and what we will do for this project.
Hello! My name is Anayah I am in the 9th grade and I am excited to be using this website for our investigations!
Hello weŕe group 8, Im Genevi! Im excited to learn about our project and what weĺl be learning,
My name is nikkolas sproule, I'm a 9th grader and am excited to see what this project brings.
Hello! I'm the scientist mentor for your project. Ask me anything about myself, my science, and/or about your project Looking forward to working with you!