Hi everyone! 

Quinn and Makayla, I really enjoyed reading your insights on factors that could have impacted your study- thank you for sharing! Those all are absolutely great things to keep in mind for limitations or as things to consider in future study designs. 

And thank you everyone for your feedback and appreciation. I have very much enjoyed being a mentor for your project, and I'm so excited for the results you got! GPP for the win 

Dear Ms. Jess

Germination responds: One of the factors that might have impacted our results were

1. We did not compost the GPP.

2. Audrey volunteered to take the plants home and the humidity might have been different.

We think the 1:1 ratio might have had a more sprouts because the GPP was more finely crushed and had more time to compost. 

We had about the same amount of light across all the plants. We did not have any replicates.

Thank you so much for helping us do our planting science project. I had a lot of fun and thank you for answering our questions and making our project easier. 

Thank you so much for helping,

Makayla

Hi Ms. Jes,

I really appreciate you helping us with this project, asking critical questions along the way, and making suggestions that help the overall flow of the project.

Thanks for everything! Goodbye! Have a good thanksgiving!

-Jacob

Thank you for helping us with everything. It helped me and everyone else that you gave us plenty of good questions and things we did not think about for our data. You frequently checked in to make sure we were okay. Have a great Thanksgiving!

Thanks for everything,

Quinn

Thankyou for working with us and giving us your advice, I belive that it was benificial in our project and I am thankful that you were willing to work with us. Thankyou for everything,

Audrey

Hi!

 Growth CER Responses: We think that the seeds liked the 1:1 better because it acted as fertilizer that helped the plants grow. The seeds probably could not grow in the 100% GPP because it did not have enough nutrients in it to let the plant grow, or because we did not compost it. There were most likely no factors that would change the results because they all had the same light level, however the soil's contents could have changed the results slightly. 

Quinn

Hi GPP Team!

It's so exciting to see these results!! Nice job team! I think your hypothesis of the GPP needing time to compost is really interesting- definitely something that could be fun as a future study! Did anything else unexpected happen during your experiment? 

Growth CER: wow! 2.5cm in one day is a lot of growth! I think you have a great case for the 1:1 ratio benefitting growth!

With this in mind, why do you think that those seeds in the 1:1 treatment fared so much better than those in the 100% GPP group? Why might the seeds not prefer that environment? Or, alternatively, were there any other factors that could've prevented them from germinating?

Germination CER: what could be some specific reasons that the seeds seem to prefer to grow in the 1:1 treatment?

Are there any other factors that could have impacted your results? ex, was there consistent light across all samples? could there have been contamination? did you have enough replicates? etc... It's never fun to be critical of your own study, but it's a really important step in the scientific process! Recognizing where your limits are, or things that could've gone better, helps other scientists better understand your study, where there are still gaps in our knowledge, and what future research needs to be done to fill those gaps. 

I'm sad that we will be saying goodbye on Monday, its been so wonderful talking with you and seeing this study develop. 

Talk soon!

Jes

Hi Ms. Jess,

Thank you for your response. We think that the 100% dirt germinated faster because it didn't need to compost. We think that the GPP needed time to compost. The sprouts are looking good.

Growth CER (Claim, Evidence and Reasoning)

Claim: GPP can help speed up the growth of sprouts when used in a 1:1 ratio. (Half dirt half GPP).

Evidence: In the 50% GPP 50% Dirt the sprouts grew the fastest, including one of them that grew 2.5 centimeters in one day. The maximum growth in one day for another seed was 1 centimeter, that's a 1.5-centimeter gap.

Reasoning: The height of a plant indicates its health. The taller a plant is the better condition it's in. Therefore, since these plants grew tall and fast, they were healthy and the GPP benefited them

Germination CER

Claim: 50% Dirt and 50% GPP is the best for germinating buckwheat seeds.

Evidence: 50% Dirt and 50% GPP germinated the highest amount of sprouts (5). While the highest amount of sprouts in one of the other soil mixtures was 2.

Reasoning: More buckwheat seeds will germinate in conditions that they prefer.

Next Monday we are going to say goodbye.

Hi Team GPP! 

How are the sprouts looking? I hope you all have fun long weekend plans :) 

Hi Sophia!

YAY FOR SPROUTS!! That's so exciting!! Fingers crossed that more begin to sprout soon! I think changing the way you water them is a great idea, good thinking. Make sure to write down the date you altered the procedure so we don't forget :) 

Do you have any other thoughts as to why only the buckwheat seeds in 100% dirt sprouted? Do you think it has to do with our GPP variable or something else? Let me know your thoughts!

Fingers crossed for more growth! 

Jes

Hi Ms. Jess,

It was so great to hear back from you. We now finally have some sprouts! It took about a week to sprout but it finally did. We have two buckwheat seeds in 100% dirt. Sadly nothing else has sprouted. We have also changed the way we are watering them. We've decided to just stick the dropper in the dirt and squirt out the water.

We hope to hear from you soon, Sophia 

Hi Jacob! 

It's so great that you have started your experiment, that is very exciting! It sounds like you all did a great job with setting up the experiment and getting things going.  How long do you think it will take them to sprout? 

Jes

Hi Ms. Jes, 

Thank you for your response,

We started our experiment today we collected soil from outside and then used the GPP we could find to get the right percentages. We have decided on watering each of the cups with 5 drops of water per day, not including Saturday and Sunday. In each cup, we planted 3 seeds at the same depth.

Hope we hear from you soon, Jacob.

Hi all! 

Sorry it took me a few days to get back to you! I have been doing tons of my own data entry right now, and I got lost in it!

I really like the model you guys chose with the different quantities of GPP vs dirt - I think you'll get some wicked cool data this way Also, great variable choices for your observations! I think setting up that google slide to put them all in was a great idea. Data management is hard but important, so having a good central spot to keep things in is a perfect start! 

Sorry to hear about the mold and GPP supply issues! It's never fun when there's issues getting a project started, but it's also SO common and normal. I'm glad to hear that you guys are finding ways around it so far! 

I have all my fingers and toes crossed that you're able to get enough in time to plant!! Do you guys have a backup plan just in case?

Let me know however I can help :)

Good luck!!

Jes

We've prepared the containers for the experiment and we're supposed to be planting next week but we've had some GPP supply issues so we might have to plant the week  after next for some GPP for monday, but I'm not sure that we can get it on time to plant.

We all think using GPP is a good idea. We are going to have 4 beakers of dirt. One with full dirt, one with half dirt and half GPP, one with 80% dirt and 20% guinea pig poop, and one with fully GPP. We will spray each beaker with 5 sprays of water every other day. We decided to record how many seeds have sprouted, how tall the plant is, and how healthy the plant is (like appearance and droopiness) every day at 4:00. Our box of GPP slightly molded, so we will try and put it somewhere where it won't mold again. We have a google slide to write our observations in.  

Thanks for the feedback,

Quinn

Hi guys! 

I hope GPP collecting has been going well! Good luck!!! :) 

Talk soon,

Jes

Hi Makayla, 

I am so glad my responses were helpful, I love hearing your ideas! 

I am very excited that you guys chose this direction, it sounds so fun and interesting. I also love that you are utilizing your classroom resources for this project- very smart :) 

I know I for one have typed guinea pig poop many times so why don't we use an acronym and say GPP? If this gets confusing let me know, and I can type it out again in my next message. 

I do have a few suggestions! 

1. Think on how you guys want to test this! Are you more interested in if the presence vs absence of GPP impacts your growth? Or do you want to see if there is an amount/ percent of GPP in that works best? This will help you both to design your project as well as help refine your hypothesis a bit more! 
2. Make sure you have a constant no matter what! Constants are so important because they give you baseline data to compare your GPP plants to. This will just be some seeds in normal soil. 
3. Take good notes of everything you do related to your samples. I have done lots of experiments and observations over the years and I cannot even tell you how many hours I have lost trying to remember what I did on a certain day. If you have a good notebook and a good system of taking notes, you'll have a much easier time at the end explaining everything that happened
   1. I suggest including the date and time and a note about whatever you did (ie, planted seed in X amount of GPP; watered X amount; took measurements on ..., etc) 

I really enjoy that you guys were so interested in having this project relate to real life situations for growing seeds, and utilizing what is around- very cool and very thoughtful. I especially love when science has real world implications that we can use to be better to our planet. 

Good luck with the GPP collecting :) 

Jes

Hi Ms. Jes, 

Hi! Thank for your responses. They helped us out a lot.

  The question we decided on is: How does growing a seed in Guinea Pig poop affect its germination and growth rate? (time, healthiness, size, et cetera) We decided that we were going to do the guinea pig poop idea. We have guinea pigs in the classroom so we can access them easily. We'll use the guinea pig poop without soil, so putting the seeds in the guinea pig poop and then watering them slightly. If we start today we should have enough poop by the end of this week. We think we will use buckwheat and soybean seeds because soybean is a hearty seed and buckwheat is picky, so we could see a range of results.  Once the plant gets too big to stay in the guinea pig poop, you could transfer it to a pot of soil. Using guinea pig poop instead of soil could be relevant because it is cheaper than buying soil, so you would not have to get fertilizers to germinate the seed. This would save you money. You would only have to buy soil once the seed was done germinating. Do you have any suggestions?
As for the questions, you asked: Our guinea pig poop question came up because there were guinea pigs next to us, so we just thought of it. The oil question came into our heads because we were thinking about the people that had excess cooking oil in their houses. We are not 100% sure about our hypotheses, but currently we think the plant will grow well but not thrive because guinea pig poop is good fertilizer.

Hello Sophia, Jacob, Makayla, Quinn, and Audrey!  

It's so nice to meet you all and hear about your varied experiences with plants! I also struggle making sure my house plants get enough water sometimes - I find that setting reminders for myself helps me to remember to take care of them It's also very cool to hear that some of you have gardens - I'm jealous! I am in Arizona and it's so hot that it's EXTRA hard to make sure everything gets enough water here, so I currently don't have one, but I would love a BIG garden of my own one day. 

I love your questions, what inspired you to ask them? For your first one about growing seeds in oil, what do you think will happen when you do this? And which oils are you thinking of using? 

As for guinea pig poop, I am so intrigued, and can't wait to hear more about it! For this one, I think you guys should think about just how much guinea pig poop you will need in order to plant all your seeds! Were you thinking of only guinea pig poop for the growing medium, or just a sprinkling on top of soil? Make sure whatever you decide, you have enough to do it multiple times, because replication is incredibly important for good science! 

I am so excited to hear more! Talk soon :) 

Jes

Hi, this is our first day logging on to Planting Science. The two questions we decided on as candidates are, growing a seed in just oil instead of water? (if so which oil works best), and the other question is whether growing a seed in Guinea Pig poop is possible (if so does it help, by how much?). Do you have any advice for doing these experiments?

Hello my name is Audrey and today is my first day of planting science, a little bit about me... last year I tried to start an herb garden but my mom, right after we bought it, filled it with her cutting garden plants so i'm still trying to grow those. I hope that we will have a good project together!

Hello, I am Quinn and I like plants even though I am allergic to their pollen. I am not quite that good with watering plants, however, and most die when its just me watching them.

Hi my name is Makayla. I used to have a garden but I do not have the best experience growing plants because every time I grow them they die.

Hi, I'm Jacob. My experience growing plants is decent, I have grown tomato plants, germinated seeds, and experimented with growing seeds in different light levels.

Hi I'm Sophia. My experience with plants is trying to grow tomatoes and not doing a very good job.  

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