| Explore | The two of us know some basic stuff about caring for flowers/cacti on our own time. We take care of easy flowering plants and small succulents. In class together we've been exploring how potato rot smells awful, feels soft, and generally how the appearance of the vegetable changes. So far we're interested in how temperature affects soft rot progression or determining if soft rot can develop on plants other than potatoes. |
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| Research Question | If we inoculate both small and large potatoes, then the larger potatoes will have a slower growth rate of soft rot because there is more surface area for the infection to reach compared to the smaller potatoes. |
| Predictions | We believe that the smaller potatoes will have a larger coverage of soft rot in comparison to the larger potatoes. Since the smaller potatoes have less area to be infected, we believe that the infection will spread somewhat faster in the smaller potatoes. |
| Experimental Design | We took nine potatoes (three small, three large, and three medium sized for controls) and inoculated each potato six times in a line across the length of the potato. The small and large potatoes were inoculated with bacteria, and the control potatoes were inoculated with water. We double bagged the potatoes and have let them sit for a week to have time to produce some amount of soft rot. |
| Investigation Theme | PGST |
| Grade Level | High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12) |
| School Name | Mercy McAuley High School |
| Session | Spring 2019 |