| Explore | To germinate, seeds need either fire or water. This helps soften up their coat so that the seedling can break through. Once it does break through and uses up the nutrients inside the seed, it uses air, water, soils nutrients, and light to make food through a process called Photosynthesis. |
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| Research Question | Will a water needing seed grow if we put fire on it? We know that some seeds need fire and some need water to soften their seed coat. The reason why some seeds need fire is because the coat is made of resin and the fire needs to melt the resin. |
| Predictions | We think the seed will germinate when we put it in the 1 second fire burst. It will do this because the fire will burn the seed coat so that the baby plant can break through. But maybe when we hit it with the 2 second burst, the baby plant will burn and not germinate. |
| Experimental Design | We'll need: 15 pea and 15 nasturtium, a controlled fire source, metal tongs, cups, dirt, and water. First we will take a nasturtium seed and hit it with a torch for 1 second. Then we will try hitting a pea seed with a torch for 1 second. Then we will do a nasturtium seed for 3 seconds and a pea seed for 3 seconds. We will plant all of the seeds and water them, and also plant and water 2 nasturtium and 2 pea control seeds. Then we will wait a few weeks and observe the plant and whether it germinated or not. We will also make a different version of the experiment where we don't water the seeds after we put them in the fire. |
| Conclusion | Three of our seeds sprouted: Pea 0 sec with water, Nasturtium 0 sec with water, and Nasturtium 3 sec with water. None of the seeds without water sprouted. Our conclusion is that some seeds didn't get too burnt and still grew, but others got too burnt and didn't grow. Also the fire didn't soften the seed coats of the ones we didn't water, so none of them sprouted. All the fire did was burn the baby plants. |
| Investigation Theme | WOS |
| School Name | Ideaventions Academy for Mathematics and Science |
| Session | Fall 2020 |