| Research Question | How does soft rot affect peeled vs unpeeled potatoes? Will soft rot develop faster if the potato is peeled? How we came up with question was we thought about how when we cut open the potatoes last time we didn't really see a lot of change on the outside of the potato so the skin seemed to act like a protective layer so we thought if that top layer is removed soft rot will develop much faster |
|---|---|
| Predictions | We believe soft rot will develop much faster in the peeled potatoes since the outer layer isn't their to act as a protective barrier. The entire potato will most likely just turn into a pile of foul-smelling mush. |
| Experimental Design | We are testing how soft rot affects peeled vs unpeeled potatoes. This experiment is much like the first experiment we did, just this time the potatoes are peeled. First we peeled 6 potatoes. 3 of the potatoes are controls that were inoculated with just water and the other 3 were inoculated with the 2 week old soft rot bacteria that had been refrigerated. We used a tooth pick to poke 6 holes in each potato, two rows of 3 horizontals to one another. With the controls the tooth pick was dipped in water but with the other 3 potatoes we dipped the tooth pick in the soft rot bacteria for every poke. After we poked holes in all of them we wrapped each potato in a damp paper towel and then double bagged them in quart freezer ziploc bags. We made sure to get most of the air out of the bags. |
| Investigation Theme | PGST |
| Grade Level | High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12) |
| School Name | Mercy McAuley High School |
| Session | Spring 2019 |