| Explore | We know that plants need light and water to grow. Plants also require oxygen to survive, as most of the living things on Planet Earth need oxygen. We can infer that out plants only need their bottles filled up once every couple days to ensure the rope keeps moisturizing the soil. The water supply depletes at a very slow rate, making them easy to maintain and keep alive. |
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| Research Question | Will more fertilizer or rocks help or hurt the growth of the seeds? |
| Predictions | I think more fertilizer will help the seed grow because when the landscaping company comes to my house they put down fertilizer to help the grass be healthier and grow so I think it will do the same for our seeds. |
| Experimental Design | Our plan is to change the circumstances with our seedling growth. We can do this by changing amount of fertalizer from the control amount to a different variable, and test our hypothesis. We can also change to amount of rock layer on our plant from the control to a new varible, and see how it changes and effect its growth. By changing these two variables, we can see how the plants are affected by the environment vs the genes, which has been the main question. We want to know if more fertilizer and rocks help/hurt the plants, which is part of the plant's environment. |
| Conclusion | 1. A claim we can make from our experiments is that there are advantages for a plant to have certain traits because it can help them blend in for use of camouflage and help make themselves more scary. Another advantage it could help protect itself from certain climates. Another claim we can make is traits are not affected by environment because it is all genetics for how the plants look. 2. Some possible explanations for our results could be the genes that their parents had and what the plants look like. To answer our essential question the way the plant looks is totally based off the genes it has. Another possible explanation for our results are the environments our plants were in were consistently changing temperature but they didn't change. 3. Our plants did well with more soil, because the soil soaks up for water, causing the plant to become hydrated without becoming drowned. The soil can also help the plant become more rooted in it, helping the plant have its roots expand and have more breathing room (literally). The soil can also help the plants stay firmly inside the bottle. 4. We could test and see if the plants do better with fertilizer than soil. Maybe the fertilizer soaks up more soil, causing us to need less water to not kill the plant. If we change up the sand-particle, then we can test and see what works better for plants opposed to that which works worse. |
| Investigation Theme | BRASSICA |
| Grade Level | High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12) |
| Teacher Name | Brian Mulcahey |
| School Name | Catholic Memorial School |
| Session | Spring 2021 |
| About this Project | They have been consistent in asking questions & uploading documents that help the mentor understand what they are doing. The students and mentor communicated frequently. They discussed the experiment and science/scientists. |