Profile

• Time Zone

  Eastern

  
  
• Organization

  College of William and Mary

  
  
• Role

  Scientist Mentor: I will mentor teams of students online

  
  
• Research Interests (300 words)

  Signal transduction in plants, plant response to stresses such as low light, phosphate and pathogens

  
  
• Profile Question 1

  When and why did you decide to go into a science career?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 1 here (300 words):

  I wanted to understand how nature worked

  
  
• Profile Question 2

  What is best about being a scientist?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 2 here (300 words):

  There is always something new to think about and learn about.

  
  
• Profile Question 3

  What is tough about being a scientist?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 3 here (300 words):

  We are always trying new experiments and sometimes they don't work. You have to analysis what went wrong to design a better experiment or ask a better question.

  
  
• Availability

  I am currently available for mentoring, please send me team match invitations

  
  
• Capacity: How many teams at a time are you comfortable working with?

  2

  
  

Recent Posts

Thunder Squad Phoebe Williams Apr 15 at 09:51am

interesting that you are measuring the root - but you are correct in taking care about what you are measuring.

yes, keeping plants watered is a challenge!

Thunder Squad Phoebe Williams Apr 15 at 09:48am

What a great graph! Your Y-axis is total growth? is this the sum of all your seedlings growth for each condition?  

What do you think happened between day 3 and 4?  Did your seedlings get smaller? 

Venus Flytrap Phoebe Williams Apr 12 at 10:15am

Hi Kirin,

Let me add some perspective to the experiment not going completely as planned.  In the lab, you would run pilot experiments - to test the experimental design, look for things that you have to modify etc. before you run your big…

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Hi Kirin,

Let me add some perspective to the experiment not going completely as planned.  In the lab, you would run pilot experiments - to test the experimental design, look for things that you have to modify etc. before you run your big experiments.  It is ok that things did not go perfectly, you will know how to design a more robust experiment next time.  The important thing is to take careful notes about what you did and what happened, you never know what information will be important moving forward. Next time you will add more water in the beginning.  This is complicated calculation - amount of water needed can be dependent on environmental conditions, e.g. if one year it is pretty cold out and the heat is running a lot, the air will be drier and your dishes will dry out more quickly.  I normally check my plants almost every day and water when they need it vs sticking to watering on specific days. 

One thing to think about, most seeds start life in at least partial darkness - they are beneath soil or leaves etc. The seed itself stored enough nutrients for the embryo to start growing and for the first few days before it needs to start photosynthesis.  Your seedlings in the dark may have started to green up in anticipation for being in the light soon... when that did not happen, they changed course in terms of what photosynthetic machinery they needed.

Where you looking at growth as well as color?  One response of plants where there is limited light is to try and "outgrow it".  Goal here is to grow taller than the thing that is shading or limiting light.