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.
Chris,
After listening to the scientists feedback yesterday, we have decided to change some things. We are adding folders and cardboard to block out all other light, and we have also decided to record how the mass changes as a result of different light colors. Today we are working on completing our procedure, tracking our progress, and working on our explore, research question, predictions, and experimental design. We would appreciate any feedback!
Hi Emma,
That is a really good idea and I hadn't thought to mention the need to isolate the lights until doing the google meets on Monday and Tuesday.
I like your research plan. Adding a second species could make the results more complicated, but it could also be a good thing if one of the species does not germinate at all. I agree that measuring two different things is a good idea, but how will you measure mass? At the end of the experiment?
One thing to think about for your explore part (above) is that it is certainly true that the amount of light a plant gets is important, your experiment deals more with the wavelength of light. So you might think about re-framing your idea and expectations around this. For example, why do plants appear green to us? What does this mean about the color of light that they can use? Another thing to think about, which is a little harder so I will give you a hint, is that the wavelengths available to a plant in full sun vs. in shade are different. Specifically the amount of red light is important. I suggest you do some searching to lear more about why. I don't think any of this effects your experimental design (which is good), but it may or may not inform your predictions and how you interpret your results.
Keep up the good work!
Chris
Hi, Chris!
Thank you for your advice. We will make sure to take it into account. In response to our light treatments we will be measuring how many seeds germinate over a set amount of days.
Today we decided on a question: How does the color of light affect how many seeds germinate? We are also working on creating our investigation plan.
I'm also realizing that I forgot to introduce myself. Hi, my name is Kaz. I like gathering very obscure information and facts that I can give people at random times.
Hi Kaz!
Keep me posted on the investigation plan. Happy to answer any questions or provide feedback on things like which specific treatments (and why those), sample sizes, what to measure etc.
Happy Friday,
Chris
Hi Sparty Seeds,
My name is Shan, and I am the liaison for your group. Nice to meet you all!
I am a Ph.D. candidate at Texas Tech University, and my research focuses on orchids (in Costa Rica and the USA) and their mycorrhizal fungi. I am excited to work with you all this semester!
Happy to see that you are coming up with a wonderful idea for designing the experiment. Your mentor would love to hear more about it.
Keep up your good work.
Regards,
Shan
We were thinking about the different types of colors, we could do red, green, and blue. We are also going to have a regular light as well.
Adalyn,
Sounds like you are narrowing your ideas down and starting to form a plan, which is exciting!
What do you plan to measure in response to your light treatments?
What are your expectations with respect to different colored light?
My general advice would be to have fewer treatments with more seeds per treatment than many treatments with just a few seeds. The regular light treatment is important I think because that serves as your control which you can compare other treatments against. What do you know about the wavelengths of light that plants use? Thinking about this might help to rule out one of your treatments.
Another really cool thing to look into is that plants can actually perceive when they are growing in the shade versus full sun based on the wavelengths of light they are getting. They use a molecule called phytochrome to do this, and they also use this molecule to perceive whether it is day or night.
Keep me posted as you refine your ideas and feel free to ask lots of questions!
Chris
Hi, Our team has come up with a couple of investigation questions we are considering. They are:
How does the color of light affect the seeds germination?
How does different temperature of the water affect the plants growth? Do you have any thoughts on these?
Good ideas! It is always good to come up with a few different potential topics early on in a project because the more you think about them you might find one more/less interesting, or one idea might just be much easier to do than the others.
I like your first idea a lot. What kinds of colors did you have in mind? How are you thinking about implementing the treatments? I have a suggestion, but I kind of want to see what you are thinking about first.
Your second idea could be interesting too. With experiments I also like to try to think about manipulating factors that plants might experience in nature. You can image that plants from near the equator probably germinate at very different temperatures than plants where you are. What kinds of seeds do you have available to you? How will you manipulate the temperature of the water (this might be a tricky part because once you add it to soil for example it will equilibrate rapidly).
Some things to keep in mind for any experiment are that you need to have replication (multiple seeds per treatment) and how much replication may depend on what you plan to measure. For example if you are measuring germination as a yes or no, you may want to start many seeds to get a good estimate of the average per treatment. I also always recommend that you plan to measure 2 different things. What are you thinking about measuring?
You are off to a great start! There is a lot to think about when planning a project, but it is great that you are talking about ideas now so you have time to come up with a plan.
Looking forward to seeing how your project ideas develop,
Chris
Hi Sparty Seeds!
It's nice to meet you! My name is Chris Oakley and I'm an Assistant Professor at Purdue University where I teach Plant Ecology. For my research, I study the genetics of traits that lead to different populations of the same plant species being best suited to local environmental conditions. I have a particular focus on how temperate plants adjust their physiology in response to cool temperatures to prepare for winter. I am increasingly interested in how climate change will disrupt these adaptations to seasonally cold environments. Most of my work is on natural populations the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, a member of the mustard family.
Before starting my job at Purdue, I was a postdoctoral scientist for 5 years at Michigan State – I miss the MSU dairy store and Lugnuts games on the 4th of July. I still have a special place in my heart for the green and white and the Lansing area.
Thanks for sharing a little bit about yourselves! I usually ask some questions like: What sorts of careers do you think you might be interested in? Why do you think plants are important? What is the coolest plant fact you know? If there is anyone who wants to add a bit more based on these questions, I'd love to hear more.
I guess fair is fair, so a little bit about me: I have two daughters in middle school and I like to watch them run track and cross country and play soccer. I also like to go to their band concerts. They keep me busy when I am not working, but if I get some free time I am usually working on my native plant or vegetable gardens or looking at/taking pictures of plants, birds, or astronomical objects. We like to go camping and hiking on vacation.
I look forward to hearing about your project ideas and asking/answering questions, but I wanted to quickly say hi, and that I am excited to be working with you!
Chris
Hello, I'm Eagen Killips. I enjoy building and fixing things, hiking, playing games, and eating food. My favorite sports are skateboarding and climbing. I don't have much else to say.
Hi, my name is Adalyn. I enjoy playing tennis going to youth group and hanging out with my friends. I love my 14-year-old dog and family! I am looking forward to learning new things during this project!
Hi, my name is Emma! I love science and want to be an aerospace engineer for a future career. I enjoy basketball, horseback riding, running, skiing, reading , and listening to music. I am looking forward to learning cool new information when doing this project!
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