Hi Spuddies,

Thanks for responding to Marina's request. I think your question is great, but I'm a little worried about your experiment. I've grown a lot of tomatoes in my life and even the fastest fruiting varieties take at least 60 days to produce the first fruit. To fully test this hypothesis I think you'd have to have them growing until after your return to school in the fall! Eek! I doubt your teacher wants that responsibility Could you perhaps tweak your question and experiment a little so that you are looking at plant growth rate, and number of leaves produced by the end of your experiment? That might be more feasible.

Also, have you all done any reading or searching to explain why you believe that a cherry tomato plant in constant light will produce more fruit, or if you revise your hypothesis, why a plant would grow more? It's important to remember that a hypothesis is not just a guess, it's an educated guess. Science isn't cheap nor quick so we usually have a good reason to believe we'll find support for our hypotheses when we do research, otherwise we'd waste a lot of time and money. So, if you all haven't already, it wouldn't hurt to read and think about what plants need to live, how they normally grow, and how the change you want to make could negatively or positively affect it.

Hope that helps.

Ruby