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Explore We know that plants need the right amount of nutrients, water, and sunlight to survive. We've discovered in class and from background research that plant growth is also affected by the soil type and the amount of nutrients in the soil. We've also discovered that natural and man-made factors can deplete the soil's nutrients. Questions that interest us are ones that deal with how different factors, like factory pollution, weather, location, etc. affect the growth and health of plants.
Research Question How does acid rain affect plants?
Predictions Most plants will not thrive when exposed to acid rain. Acid rain is harmful and can dissolve nutrients that are essential for plant life.
Experimental Design We are going to see how much acid one plant can tolerate. To make our "acid rain" we are going to dilute different amounts of vinegar. The plant will get watered with different amounts of vinegar to see how much acid it can withstand.
Conclusion From our experiment, we can say that the plants with a pH closer to neutral, 5.0 & 7.0, grew the healthiest. This can happen because the acidity didn't take all of the nutrients from the soil, so the plants could grow more. From our experiment, the plants with the 3.0 pH barely made it out of the seed before dying. This could be because the strong acid depleted almost all of the nutrients, and the germinating seed, couldn't sprout. The plants with the 5.0 pH looked much healthier than the 3.0 plants. This could be because not all of the nutrients were depleted, so it had nutrients to grow, but the root systems didn't look as healthy. The plants with the 7.0 pH (our control), look the healthiest because the stem had a healthy green color and the leaves had a bigger surface area and also had a healthy green color. This could be because the water we were giving it didn't take many nutrients since it was a neutral pH. The root system wasn't as long, so the plant didn't have to spend time growing the roots to look for nutrients since they were mostly still there. The plants with the 9.0 pH, look the most unhealthy. The stems were light and pale green in color and they were very floppy, and the leaves were smaller and look unhealthy. The roots of these plants were much longer than the others, and this could've been because the plants didn't have many nutrients, so it focused more on growing the roots to obtain nutrients than growing the plant itself. In the future, we can do this same experiment in a more controlled environment. In a more controlled environment, the plants could be looked after more than once a day, and they can be watered more. Also, if needed we can use different types of plants and experiment in an outside simulation environment, like a greenhouse.
Investigation Theme AFW
Grade Level High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12)
Teacher Name Carrie Bradley
School Name Lincolnton High School
Session Spring 2022

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NSF_Logo.jpg This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant #2010556 and #1502892. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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