Info
| Explore | We have learned that plants are often infested by parasites, organisms that latch onto leaves and take nutrients and water out from the plant. The host plant is often hurt by the parasites so farmers and gardeners have found remedies to reduce the spread of them. We have discovered in class... |
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| Research Question | We are testing the question "Which is better at reducing brown soft scale insects: a store-bought remedy or a home remedy?" We came up with the question by using the four question strategy and listing out all the materials available to us and all the actions parasites do as well as thinking about... |
| Predictions | Our alternate hypothesis is that horticultural oil will be more effective than isopropyl alcohol in removing scale insects. We think this will happen because horticultural oil is made for this purpose. Our null hypothesis is that horticultural oil and isopropyl alcohol will have the same effect... |
| Experimental Design | 1) Wear safety goggles. 2) Shake the bottle of horticultural oil. 3) Measure 37.5 mL of water using a graduated cylinder and a pipette for more precision. 4) Pour the water into a small spray bottle. 5) Open the bottle of horticultural oil. 6) Measure 0.5 mL of horticultural oil using a... |
| Conclusion | The data that this experiment produced was very different from what would be expected. The horticultural oil and horticultural oil control leaf both produced only 0.02 g of honeydew. However, the alcohol control leaf produced 0.01 grams of honeydew, and the alcohol leaf produced 0.04 grams. The... |
| About this Project |
This team chose to design an investigation to determine the effectiveness of a commercial horticultural product vs. a DIY home remedy for ridding one of our large classroom plant specimens from an infestation of brown soft scale insects. Their strategy for keeping track of the amount of... |
Updates
Congratulations guys. You're all incredible. I didn't have to do anything! Good luck with your potential future careers in science. I highly recommend considering UC Berkeley. It's a top 5 school with tons of research opportunities. I don't know if they close this, but feel free to post here if you have any career/college/science questions you want advice on.
-Ian
Hey Ian. I just wanted to give you a huge thanks for all of your support and help that you have our team throughout this project. I know it must've been as much of a commitment as we made, always having to be there for guidance and support. So thank you so much for your help to our project. We all really appreciated it.
Hi Ian,
Happy Thanksgiving! Our team just submitted our final research paper and I want to thank you for all of your help. I learned a lot about the research process which I will be able to apply to other projects in the future. You helped a lot with many of the decisions we made. Thank you so much for all of your help!
Hi, Ian! With our project finished, I would like to thank you for helping us as a mentor. I know you must have a busy schedule yourself, so the fact that you were willing to take time out of your days to help us means a lot. Conducting this experiment was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot of new things. I hope you have a great Thanksgiving! :)
Hi Ian! Thank you so much for being our mentor. I can imagine how busy you must be, so it means so much to me that you took time out to work on this and lead us through our project. Conducting this experiment gave me some really valuable experience, and I will always keep in mind the advice you gave us. Thank you so much for all your guidance! Have a great Thanksgiving!
We just uploaded our final paper. As a group, we wanted to thank you for all your help!
We just wanted to let you know that our experiment has ended and we are currently working on our research paper.
We updated the Experimental Design Diagram due to changes in the hypotheses and title. We changed the hypotheses from being focused on general types of remedies (like home remedies) to individual remedies. This was due to the fact that we only used one remedy from each remedy type, so it would be more accurate to say that the experiment was based on the individual remedies. In addition, we were able to identify the specific scale insect on the plant, so that was updated on the Experimental Design Diagram as well.
These are the pictures of the scale insects we took under the microscope.
We added a row for the total change from weeks 1 to 3 because we feel that the data from week 4 is inaccurate. This is because a lot of scale insects fell into some of the trays, changing the mass.
We recently used a scale insect guide from https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/insect-and-related-pests-of-flowers-and-foliage-plants/scale-insects-in-the-greenhouse" data-sanitized="https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fcontent.ces.ncsu.edu%2Finsect-and-related-pests-of-flowers-and-foliage-plants%2Fscale-insects-in-the-greenhouse&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFxnU0zUKPGxw_60Poo5Axpw6-kWA" dir="ltr" href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fcontent.ces.ncsu.edu%2Finsect-and-related-pests-of-flowers-and-foliage-plants%2Fscale-insects-in-the-greenhouse&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFxnU0zUKPGxw_60Poo5Axpw6-kWA" rel="nofollow noreferrer" tabindex="-1" target="_blank">https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/insect-and-related-pests-of-flowers-and-foliage-plants/scale-insects-in-the-greenhouse to better identify what type of scale insect was on our plant. The plant is infested with brown soft scale insects. We looked at some under the microscope on Monday. As soon as we get the phone attachment for the microscope, we will take pictures and upload them for you to see.
These are pictures of the alcohol-treated leaf that died. (The pictures look warped in the post, but you can see them better if you click on "view and share files".)
Well, it wasn't just the alcohol apparently: Unfortunately, the other leaf with the horticultural oil also has died. We suspect that, due to the rising heat inside the building and the lack of humidity, the plant is dying from the leaf up due to its surroundings. However, we were using 70% alcohol and using cotton swabs to apply it to the leaf. We don't have an exact quantity of how much alcohol we used each time, but we used enough to cover the half of the leaf in its entirety.
Update: It seems that the leaf we used for the alcohol treatment has died. The entire plant is fine, it is just that one leaf that has died. Pictures will be uploaded later.
Yikes. That's super annoying. How much alcohol and what type of alcohol did you use? Alcohol will definitely kill a leaf.
For your reference, I have uploaded the most recent data table. I also wanted to add that last week we taped down the leaf to the stem to make sure it moves less so that we can get accurate results. In addition, we will have to delay our next data collection by a few days since we are not in school on Friday, the day we usually take measurements.