| Explore | We know that plants need carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight in order to perform photosynthesis to convert those ingredients to sugar (and oxygen) to stay alive. We also learned recently that seeds are actually living things, but it's like they're sleeping in a way (dormant), waiting for the right conditions in order to grow into a full plant. Seeds can actually dormant for at least 30,000 years and still grow into a plant when the conditions are right, which is pretty crazy but awesome at the same time. Not sure what else interests me (Will) about plants, perhaps is it possible for plants to feel pain and/or have consciousness? |
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| Research Question | How will the temperature of the water that the plant absorbs affect how much the plant will grow? |
| Predictions | (Note: Will J wrote this, so some of my other teammates might have different predictions.) If the water absorbed by the plant is warmer, then the plant will grow better. I think this because warmer object’s molecules move a lot faster, so maybe if the water is faster then it will go towards the plant more and be absorbed easier. Or it could have the opposite effect, where water will go away from the plant. But since there’s going to be roots and they will expand across the dish, it can turn the tables so that the water will be absorbed by the plant’s roots, instead of it flowing away from the plant/randomly. Then for cold water, I think it won’t work because the water will be a lot slower and will be harder for the plant to absorb. |
| Experimental Design | We divide the number of seeds by two. Half of the seeds will be given warm water (let's say ninety degrees F), and the other half of the seeds will be given cold water (let’s say 45 degrees F). We should water the plants everyday with a teaspoon of water half with warm water and half with cold water. Changing the paper towel under the seeds the next day then repeating the process from the day before. And also give the seeds plenty of sunlight. Once we get to the point where we have to write the conclusion, we can measure the heights of each plant, and possibly how green the plants are or something. The only issue we can see with this investigation plan is that all of our sinks might not be able to go as warm as ninety degrees and as cold as 45 degrees. To counter this we can all measure the temperatures of the hottest setting and the lowest setting of our sinks. If we find the temperatures that everyone has available in their sink, then we will use those temperatures for our experiment. |
| Conclusion | My conclusion was Hot water allows the seed to grow faster this is because warmer water allows things to move quicker but cold water makes things move slower. The evidence I gathered on this was the largest seed growths on my investigation both of the seeds had grown for the exact amount of days and on the last day I measured it the cold seed was 0.5 cm long and the hot was 2 cm long meaning there was a 1.7 cm difference in growth and they both had grown for the exact amount of time showing that hot water allows plants to grow quicker. |
| Investigation Theme | WOS |
| Teacher Name | Evelyn Gray |
| School Name | DeWitt Middle School |
| Session | Spring 2021 |