| Explore | Plants need to work harder to pull water out of salty soil, and too much salt can kill plants. Flooded plants struggle to take in oxygen. Floods, hurricanes, and tsunamis can devestate plant life, but why? The salinity of the Pacific Ocean is at about 33%, and the Atlantic Ocean is at about 35%. |
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| Research Question | How do costal disasters such as tsunamis, hurricanes, and floods affect costal plant life? |
| Predictions | We think that the plants with higher levels of salinity will fail to germenate or germenate less than the plants with freshwater. |
| Experimental Design | We have x pea seeds placed in three different petri dishes. The first petri dish will be watered with freshwater. The second will be watered with salt water with a 33% salinity (33g of salt to 1L water). The third will be watered with salt water with a 35% salinity (35g of salt to 1L water). We will water the plants each day to see how the seeds germinate. They all have the same amount of light and water, the only change is the salinity of said water. |
| Conclusion | Based on our final results, we came to the conclusion that the higher the salinity of water is, the less plants will germinate. Our fresh water seeds consistantly germinated in both trials. In our second trial we lowered the salinity levels, but the seeds did not germinate as well as the freshwater, though some seeds did germinate. |
| Investigation Theme | WOS |
| Grade Level | High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12) |
| Teacher Name | Nichole Schelling |
| School Name | Medford High School |
| Session | Spring 2022 |