Info
| Explore | From our prior knowledge, we know that plants are adaptable, do photosynthesis, and do cellular respiration. Outside of school we have had experiences where a plant dies because it has too much light, or not enough. From this information we can conclude that a plant needs a very specific amount... |
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| Research Question | How does changing the color of light ( blue, green, red or white) affect the amount of seeds that germinate and the seeds mass after sprouting? |
| Predictions | Our prediction is that white light will germinate the most seeds. We think this because white light is a combination of red, green, and blue light; only having one part of the light could cause problems with the plants' growth. Similar to how without predators, animal populations would skyrocket;... |
| Experimental Design | Our plan is to use different colors for light in this investigation. Red, blue, green, and white. 1. Place 5 alfalfa and 5 chive seeds under each light. * set folders and cardboard up to prevent light from going through* 2. Add .15 mL of water to each paper towel. 3. Record the germinated... |
| Conclusion | Claim: Green light germinates alfalfa and chives the quickest and creates a large mass. Evidence: In our experiment we collected data from four different light colors (red, blue, green, and white) acrost two different species (chives and alfalfa). After averaging our data, we found that the... |
| About this Project |
This team was another all-around great team. They did a nice job planning their investigation. They were detailed and listened to their mentors feedback. Additionally, they did a nice job communicating updating their Planting Science site and communicating with their mentor (thank you Chris... |
Updates
Sparty seeds,
Congratulations on completing your project. It has been a lot of fun following your progress! Thanks for letting me be part of your scientific journey.
Stay green (and white),
Chris
Hi Chris, it's been a pleasure working with you on this project. You've provided a lot of useful information, and for that, I thank you. Goodbye.
Hi Chris! Sorry about not being able to see the axis on the screenshot! I will put one in that will hopefully be better! Thank you so much for teaching and helping us with this experiment!
The following is my evaluation of our experiment.
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What are two sources of error and how could they have affected the experiment and results?
Two sources of error in our experiment were that we did not give the plants enough water to begin with, and we also later learned that chives and alfalfa have very different germination periods. The difference between germination periods caused us to compare both seed types separately because on may have worked better under other colors of light, that we did not explore due to our timeframe. In the beginning we did not give the plants enough water, and this may have caused them to be unhealthier than if they had more water.
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How confident are you in your results? (Use the confidence chart) And why did you choose that confidence level?
On a scale of 1-5 I would give my confidence rating a 4 because we did everything possible to minimize error, then ajusted our plans to solve problems. From the confidence chart I would say very confident. As this allowed our team to be flexible when still gathering the correct information. Overall, after comparing with other groups that did a similar experiment, I feel confindan with my results.
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What surprised you and why?
I was surprised that the white light plants did not do very well. At first the looked the strongest, butb as they were sprouting the plants became very unhealthy. I was very surprised because, when we did predictions I assumed that the white light would grow best because it was closest to the sunlight, however it did not.
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What is a related question that you would be interested in investigating?
I would be interested in investigating how much light a plant needs, and how this would effect germination. I think this would help us figure out why the white light did not do as well as expected.
Looks like a good write-up! I wasn't able to read the axes on the figures. Could you make the text larger before taking the screenshot?
Chris
Thank you, Chris! We do have labels, you just can't see them in the photos. We are planning to summarize and present our data with a bar graph!
Ok. Looking forward to seeing the results! One of my favorite parts of doing science is getting fresh new data and sitting down to summarize and analyze it. Keep me posted. Chris
Hello Chris,
Today was our final day of experimenting, and we have concluded that green light germinates plants the quickest, and that produces the most mass. However, we learned that chives take a significantly longer amount of time to germinate, so we are planning on comparing the two different seed types as different sets of data as opposed to combining all of the data. We are also posting pictures of the final plant results!
Looks good! You may need to add labels (species/treatment) to your pictures. How do you plan to summarize and present your data?
Have a great weekend,
Chris
Today was our 6th day of the experiment. Over the weekend, our plants were very dry so we decided to add more water. This was the only thing we have changed, and we went from 1.5 to 3 mL of water. Overall the plants are growing well, the most amount of germinated seeds is the green light alfalfa seeds and the red light chives have had no germination. One problem we ran into was measuring the mass daily, so in the end we subtracted the average paper towel weight from the weight of the seeds and paper towel combined. Later on this could lead to some incorrect data in our end results. We would appreciate any feedback on our experiment so far! The pictures are of our current investigation set-up.
Hi Emma,
Sounds like things are going well, and you are learning to be flexible and just your plan as needed just like real scientists!
When you are weighing the paper towel alone to indirectly get at the weight of the plants are you taking care to make sure it is as wet as the one in the petri dish? It may be that your measurement at the end of the experiment is the one you put the most trust in. If you can, maybe let that dry out a bit before you weigh it. Once you get to the end please post pictures in regular light with the lids off so I can see the plants. I am very curious to see how it turns out!
Chris
Groovy! I love it! I'm excited to see how it turns out. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help in the meantime.
Chris
Thank you, Chris! We each posted a picture of our predictions of what will happen to the seeds under each color of light. I am sorry the files are hard to read. We do not have any results yet but will soon! The files we are sending now our pictures of our investigation set up.
Hi Sparty Seeds,
Hope you had a good spring break!
What is it that you have posted? Some of the file are hard to read. Are these your predictions? I assume you don't have any results yet.
One thing I will challenge you on is what you mean by lighter and darker light? Isn't dark the absence of light?
Have you learned about different wavelengths of light yet? Check this out and you can probably find some other sources too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_spectrum
http://photobiology.info/Chalker-Scott.html
Keep me posted and let me know what I can do to help,
Chris
Great questions Chris! This team was really thinking yesterday and these resources will be helpful as they continue to think about their experiment.
They did have one question that I wasn't very confident in. Perhaps you have some insight. They were wondering if the "blue light" that comes from computers (the kind people get special glasses to avoid) is the same as the "blue light" that will come from a blue light bulb...
It is really fun to think about light and it is much more complicated than we think at first. All those beautiful fall colors are from pigments that help plants capture light wavelengths of different frequency spectra than chlorophyll (which reflects green). I can't answer the question about blue light with confidence, but if we perceive both to be blue it makes sense that they are similar in wavelength. If so "blue-blocker" film or glasses might be an interesting way to manipulate light that I hadn't thought about.