| Explore | 1. What do we know about plants from our experiences outside of school? What we know about plants from our experience outside of school is that there are two types of plants: perennial plants which are needed to be planted once and blooms itself every summer and spring. Annual plants, are needed to be planted every year. Another thing that we learned about plants is that they adapt to temperature, for example a plant that is found in the Sahara dessert won't be able to survive in Toronto. Likewise a plant grown in Toronto won’t be able to survive in the Arctic. 2. What have we discovered in class and background research? Something that we discovered in class is that photosynthesis is a process when a metabolic process transforms solar energy into chemical energy as a carbohydrate. The Calvin cycle is a process that does not require light to perform chemical reactions because it happens after the energy has been captured. It takes place in the chloroplast, during photosynthesis. 3. What questions about plants interest us? Something that really interests me about plants is even if plants are given all the required minerals,water and light but will they survive without sun? |
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| Research Question | 4. What do we want to test or study? What we want to test is the effect of potassium and calcium on the plant. 5. How did we come up with the question(s)? We came up with these questions by thinking about how realistic we can be, as this can actually be tested on real plants.. 6. How does the question fit what we know about the topic? This question fits the topic because we learned about plant growth affected by different variables such as minerals and fertilizers. |
| Predictions | 7. What are the possible outcomes of our study given the variables we are working with? The possible outcome of this experiment will be, the plant provided with potassium will grow taller and faster than the plant provided with calcium. as potassium is absorbed by plants in large amounts. The plant without either will grow at a normal rate. 8. What is our explanation for why and how we think this will happen? We believe this will happen because potassium is absorbed by plants in large amounts. The plant without either will grow at a normal rate. |
| Experimental Design | 9. What is our plan? Be sure to include enough detail that another group can replicate our experiment. Our plan for this project is to determine whether potassium or calcium have a greater impact on the growth of a plant. Take 3 plant seeds Plant it in a pot with same amount of fertilizer, water and light. Label it A, B, and C Add calcium in A, potassium in B and add nothing C 10. What variables will we test? We will test a plant with potassium, a plant with calcium and a plant with nothing 11. What variables will we measure and observe? We will test the plant’s growth. 12. What variables will we keep constant? The variables that we will keep constant are; the amount of light, water and fertilizer. 13. How will we record our data? We will record our data using an observation table and a graph to analyze our results. |
| Conclusion | 14. What claim can we make from our experiment? The claim that we are making from our experiment is that the plant provided with potassium will grow at a higher rate than calcium. 15. What are possible explanations for our results? The possible explanations for our results is that plants absorb potassium more than calcium. 16. How do the data we collected and our reasoning with scientific ideas support our claim? Answer will come shortly 17. What future experiments could be done to expand on the results of this experiment? Answer will come shortly |
| Investigation Theme | POS |
| Grade Level | High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12) |
| School Name | David & Mary Thomson C. I. |
| Session | Fall 2017 |