| Explore | What do you know about plants? What questions do you have? Use this space to list the facts or ideas you know before starting your research, as well as things you would like to find out more about. I know that plants start out as seeds that are spread in various ways. Plants also can do photosynthesis and cellular respiration therefore meaning they have mitochondria and chloroplast. Some things that I would want to learn is what and how the necessary things help the seed germinate |
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| Research Question | How does the amount of seeds in a location affect the speed of germination? |
| Predictions | My first prediction is that if I use water then it will germinate faster than any other one because water is used all the way up until the plant dies during photosynthesis My second prediction is that if the seeds are closer together then they will germinate slower because they have to compete with each other. |
| Experimental Design | Using 6 Petri dishes with 2 having 15, 2 having 10, 2 having 5 using the whole dish. The Petri dishes have 2 squares of paper towels in each petri dish. Label the dishes A-F Water all the seeds equally with 1 tablespoon measuring using a beaker repeat step 2 every day For six days observe the seeds and see which seeds have grown the longest using a ruler to measure sprout and root (pull it out). Materials 60 mustard seeds, 6 Petri dishes, 18 squares of paper towels, 1able spoon, water, data table, labels, marker, ruler. |
| Conclusion | If there is a lower amount of seeds in the area then the seeds will grow better. My proof for that is that my experiment is that the petri dishes that only have 5 seeds in them had the highest average seed length with 84 and 86.8 mm. While both 15 were the two of the lowest at 66.07 and 68.07. The Petri dishes with the 10 seeds in them had a very split average with one having an average of 80, but the other one had an average of 66.4 which could probably be to the fact that two of the seeds didn’t sprout and without those two sees the average was 83 which still supports my claim. The reason for this is because the seeds in the higher focus of seeds had to compete for resources such as water, and there is a thing that plants produce called allelochemical. Which is produced by plants to stop other plants from growing so it caused more stunted growth in dishes with more seeds because there were more plants to produce it. My prior knowledge didn't say anything about the number of seeds, but my prediction which was if the seeds are closer together then they will germinate slower because they have to compete with each other was correct, and so was my reasoning to an extent. |
| Investigation Theme | WOS |
| Teacher Name | Evelyn Gray |
| School Name | DeWitt Middle School |
| Session | Spring 2022 |