| Explore | We see all kinds of plants on a daily basis; most of the time not even acknowledging their existence. Plants provide us with oxygen and we provide them with carbon dioxide. Without plants, humans and most life forms would not exist. We are working on a project with plants, but what about underwater plants? How do underwater plants grow? How do plants that live in dark settings with no or little light live? |
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| Research Question | How does the amount of nutrients effect the size and length of plant leaves? Because we have "low" and "high" nutrient plants, we thought it would be interesting to see if the nutrients amount has effects on the size of certain areas of the plant and we chose to study the leaves. |
| Predictions | We predict that the "low" and "high" nutrient plants will show differences when compared to each other. The leaves on the "high" nutrient plants may grow larger in size, as well as the plant itself. |
| Experimental Design | Our plan is to grow 12 plants. 6 of these will be in a container with 6 pellets of nutrients, while the other 6 will be in a container with 24 pellets. We will observe and record data as the plants continue to grow. We are measuring height, length of first leaf, quantity of true leaves, qty of flowers, and qty of seed pods within each plant as they grow. The constants in this experiment consist of constant water and light. |
| Conclusion | The amount of the nutrients that we have in our pots will affect the amount of leaves on the plants, the pot with more nutrients will have bigger leaves than the pot with less nutrients. Our data will show that over a span of time the leaves on the more nutrient rich soil will grow faster and bigger than the former. Future experiments could include testing different plant species. |