Info
| Explore | We know that plants need certain things to survive ( water, sunlight etc.). We also know that different plants have different time-frames on how long it takes to grow. In class, we learned what agronomy is and we learned the correct pH level for plants. We also learned that if the weather is... |
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| Research Question | We want to study the affect of different soil temperatures on plant growth. We came up with this question because we were wondering how different plants grow in different soil temperatures. The soil temperatures will represent different climates and how the temperature in those climates affect... |
| Predictions | A possible outcome is that the cooler weather will slow down plant growth because the plant doesn't thrive in temperatures other than what it is used to. We think the warm weather will dry the plant out because the warm temperature will take the moisture out of the plant. |
| Experimental Design | Supplies: -12 plastic cups - 24 radish seeds 2 in each cup - 3 thermometers - soil filled to the first line in the plastic cup - 25 ml of water every other day per cup - 1 light bulb First, we set up one light bulb underneath the container.( see updates page to see how we set up... |
| Conclusion | The warm bin pants grew heather and taller than the cold and controlled bins. One explanation is that the moister from the cap being on the warm bin ( acting like a greenhouse) made the plants more damp helping them grow at a faster rate and making them stronger. An explanation for the cold bin... |
| About this Project |
Updates
Hi Steven
I just wanted to let you know that I have attached our journals and power point to the files page.
-Michayla
Hi Steven
I just wanted to let you know that I have attached our journals and power point to the files page.
-Michayla
It's been great working with you, Crazy Coconuts. I was excited each day in anticipation of your posts, and I was pleased that you were able to be creative about your projects.
I thought that your results were very interesting, although you didn't draw very many conclusions about the weight of the plants, only growth. As silly as this sounds, if I were a radish farmer, I would want radishes, and the bigger the better, and I'd care less about the above ground biomass. While you didn't have enough time for radishes to develop fully, I wonder if your weight data, where the control weighed more than both experimental groups, suggest that these control conditions would produce bigger radishes. It would be something to possibly test in the future.
I hope you all maintain your excitement and enthusiasm for science! Keep up the good work!
Steven
Also, if you have a PowerPoint presentation, please upload it so I can see how cool it was!
Steven
This session of planting science has been such a great learning experience. We would have hoped for better results but that is just what happens in an experiment. We all greatly appreciate the help and encouragement that you gave us and our project. In the end we could not have had a better more helpful mentor.
Thank you,
Michael, Michayla, and Emmie
Steven
This session of planting science has been such a great learning experience. We would have hoped for better results but that is just what happens in an experiment. We all greatly appreciate the help and encouragement that you gave us and our project. In the end we could not have had a better more helpful mentor.
Thank you,
Michael, Michayla, and Emmie
Steven
This session of planting science has been such a great learning experience. We would have hoped for better results but that is just what happens in an experiment. We all greatly appreciate the help and encouragement that you gave us and our project. In the end we could not have had a better more helpful mentor.
Thank you,
Michael, Michayla, and Emmie
Hi Team,
As we are finishing up, please make sure that each team member has updated and uploaded their journal, and that you have posted a short summary of your conclusion and how it relates to agronomy, and then upload your final presentation (ppt) - you should be completely done by Tuesday. Make sure you thank your mentor, too!
Michayla,
I saw your post - the radishes did grow, but yours had not developed enough to be recognizable as radishes - they were still pretty young. They would have to grow longer in order to develop fully.
Thanks for keeping me updated and letting me know you are finished with the experimental part of your project (and will be on vacay next week).
I noticed that you suggest in your conclusions that the warmer plants "grew healthier and taller," but is this statement actually reflected in your data? I agree that the cold plants performed less well than both, but, with the exception of the final 2 days, the control plants were taller (but not by much). Also, you noted that the control plants were much heavier than the heat/cold treated plants. Does this suggest that heat or cold was beneficial or not to the plants?
If you were to change your conclusions based on your presented evidence, what would you say?
Hi Steven,
We have vacation all of next week. Just wanted to let you know because we will not be working on our project during this time.
Thanks,
Michayla
Looks like you are in the final stages of your projects
It’s great to see that teams from your school are wrapping up and posting conclusions. Enjoy the final stages of your project, and feel free to post any final comments or questions you have for your mentors.
Farewell and Best Wishes
As this research project is now in the final stages of wrapping-up, we wish to thank everyone who participated in this inquiry; the students, mentors, teachers and others behind the scenes. We appreciate all of your efforts and contributions to this online learning community.
Scientific exploration is a process of discovery that can be fun! There are many unanswered questions about plants just waiting for new scientists to consider, investigate, and share.
Please come back and visit the PlantingScience Research Gallery Archive anytime (Found under Community>Projects) to view this project in the future. You can search the Archive by key word, team name, topic, or school name.
Good bye for now.
Warm regards,
The PlantingScience team
Hi steven
Today we dumped out our plants, unfortunately we had no radishes growing. We weighed the plants and the warm was 0.3 grams, Cold 0.2 grams, and controlled 1.6 grams.
Glad to hear things are starting to wrap up for you. Thanks for sharing your data and figure with me. What does your graph tell you about your plants and treatments? It seems unusual to me that height decreases... I assume this doesn't mean that somehow your plants actually got smaller! Is this an effect of your plants dying or lodging too much?
Hi steven,
Today is the last day of measuring. However, this will not be the last day of the whole thing.
Hi steven,
Today is the last day of measuring. However, this will not be the last day of the whole thing.
Steven
Today we will update our journals as we do every Friday. Next week however is the last week of our project, so our conclusions will soon be written. At the moment we have been struggling to keep some of our plants alive. The nitrogen rich soil has caused them to grow up to 15cm tall, but due to this some stems have bent over the weight on the pants tiny stems. i think that one way we could straighten the plants would be to ask our teacher if she has any little straws that we could cut up and put around the plants stems. over the weekend the plants should end up watering themselves as they had the past two weekends so we are not completely concerned with watering them today. Hopefully all goes smoothly,
Michael
This characteristic that you observed with the plants falling over is called "lodging," and can be quite common. In fact, some of the varieties of quinoa plants we grow exhibit this behavior under certain circumstances. As you mentioned, it can be caused by high nitrogen levels, but also by wet soils, storm damage, soil density, disease, sowing date, overpopulation, and seed type. This is one of the "tests" a crop must undergo before it is deemed suitable for planting. Obviously, farmers don't want a plant, especially corn, to fall over to the ground, as it may prevent them from harvesting them or may increase the chances of disease and damage.
And, yep, I wouldn't worry about giving the plants water for the weekend. Seems like they have been doing pretty well on their own.
Excellent work on this project, team! I can't wait to see your final report. You all have demonstrated an excellent degree of inquisitiveness, excitement, and creativity on this project, all of which are great qualities of scientists!
I'm glad to hear things are moving forward! It looks like you are seeing above-ground differences among your treatments, though perhaps not too much between the control and warm bin. Do you know how much longer you will monitor your plants before you pull them out and weigh them/look at their roots? I am curious to see if the roots actually develop into what we know radishes look like. If they do develop, you may consider measuring the size of the radishes... perhaps take a string, loop it around the widest part of the radish, and then measure the length of the string. Just another suggestion.
I was also elated to hear of each of your interests. The common theme among them for me was that you all understand and are interested in the idea that plants are living organisms that respond to differences in their environments just like animals do (it's just that plants don't move... which actually creates a special problem for plants - for example, they don't go from one place to another to find good temperatures for growth and development)!
Steven,
Today we did the normal stuff. We measured, watered, and got the temps.
Soil temperatures:
Cool soil- 23.3 degrees celsius
Normal/ controlled- 26.1 degrees celsius
Warm soil- 30.9 degrees celsius
The reason the plants were a little warmer was because the ice packs melted, and it was very warm out the past 2 days.
Hope to hear from you soon,
Crazy Coconuts
Steven,
This project is very interesting to me. I think that what interests me most is learning what different plants need to live and be healthy. Since I want to be some form of scientist when I grow up, the whole experiment is pretty exciting to me.
Emmie
Steven,
Thanks, we ave been rolling smoothly since the watering problem cane to a conclusion. I'm not sure if anyone has told you yet but we are only going to water our plants when they have to be watered from now on.
Right now I am most interested in why our plants are growing so so tall. The warm and controlled bin are over 10 cm! After all this is not normal fr radish plants. When I took research on why this was happening, I found out that the soil we are using is super rich in nitrogen. When plants get to much nitrogen they tend to grow tall and are more open to infections. See you on Monday.
Michael
Hi steven its Michayla
I am interested in the cold bin. It is pretty common that the warm and controlled bin would grow, but i didn't think that the cold bin would grow at all and it did! Lately the cold bin hasn't been very cold. Do you have any suggestions on how to make it colder?
Steven,
Today the temperatures were closer than usual.
Control- 20.6 degrees Celsius
Warm- 23.3 degrees Celsius
Cold- 17.3 degrees Celsius
It may be due to the fact that the light bulb for the warm bin went out, but it was replaced. We got more snow for the cold bin also.
To answer your question, we do think that we could weigh the plants in the end.
- Emmie
That's no problem. What we hope is that over the course of the whole experiment the temperatures are overall different from each other.
I'd like to hear what each of you is enjoying most so far about the project. What has interested you the most or made you excited?
Hi Steven!
There is a difference in the warm and room temperature bin, the difference in temperatures is one. Another thing is there seems to be more growth in the warm bin.We are not yet sure when we will be ending the project
- Michayla
It's good that the temperatures are different, but I am particularly interested to know if there are differences in the plant's reaction to those different temps. After looking at Michael's report, it does look like the warm plants germinated and started growing sooner than the control, although they seem to have caught up since then.
Continue to collect your data and look at it for patterns as you do. There's no detail too small! Have you decided if you will be able to weigh your plants at the end?
Turns out our plants absorbed a lot of moisture from their bins over the weekend. When we watered them they were super soggy, and were in a pool of water. Due to this we decided to drain the plants so that they do not drown. The cold bin temperature went up over the weekend, but that is to be expected because the ice packs melted. We finally gt a sprout in our cold bin, and the other bin's plants are climbing up to nearly three inches tall. Just keeping you updated.
Michael
Thanks for the update, Michael! Experiments don't always go as planned, but I am glad to see that you were able to think quickly and drained all that excess water from the plants.
Do you notice any difference between the warm and the room temp bin? How long will you continue to observe your plants and collect your data?
Thanks for keeping me updated!
Hi
We have been collecting the temperatures and the average height in each bin. We have no plants in the cold bin. Today the temperature in the cold bin has almost doubled in temperature.yesterday it was 9.9 degrees celsius and today it is 16.2 is that ok?
Michayla
Yes, it's OK if the temperatures in the bins vary, so long as the cold bin is colder than the control bin overall.
Steven,
Today we have sprouts in the controlled bin and the warm bin. The temperatures in the soil were 9.9 degrees celsius (Cold), 21.3 degrees celsius for the normal one, and 33.6 degrees celsius for the warm one. We are rotating the cups so that they get equal amounts of light. Thank you for your opinions,
Emmie
That's great that there is such a wide temperature difference. No sprouts yet in the cold bin? Have you started to collect some data? What data are you collecting?
You may also want to consider rotating your cups each day. Based on your photo, it looks like the light source is more under one area than another. This could mean that the soil directly above the light gets hotter than the soil farther away. Be consistent where you are measuring soil temperature (may not be in the same cup if you rotate them, but should measure in the same spot within the bin, e.g. the soil over the light).
However, because of the light source so close to our plants, the light will have to be shut off more often. This means at night, possibly short periods during the day, and weekends. (The weekends one would have to happen anyways... fire hazard.) Still this should increase soil temperature more rapidly.
Michael
Yes, this is not problem. The heat should be trapped in the soil for longer than it stays in the air anyway. With your thermometers, are you sticking them in the soil to measure soil temp or inside the side of the box to measure air temp? I recommend sticking them in the soil if you can.
Plus, this makes it a little more realistic! Once the sun goes down, temperatures cool off over night, just like what will happen here. And I understand the reason for not having them on over the weekend... there's just no way around this and you have to work with what you can.
Hi Steven.
I know the main focus for our project is seeing how the soil temperature effects plant growth. When we see the end result should we do the average temperature for the whole project in each bin.
Thanks Michayla.
Yes, you can just report the mean temperatures over the days. In my mind, you could do a simple statistical test called a t-test to compare the temperatures to see if they are significantly different. Statistics may be too far to go with this project, but if you want me to do it for you, just give me the data!
How often are you recording the temps? Once per day? How many weeks?
This is our new design for our warm soil plant. We put a cage below the bin and are now releasing the light from under it. This should increase the soil temperature quicker.
Excellent! Let me know how it goes. I am curious to see how cold/warm you can get them.
Thanks for the picture! The setup looks great! But, yes, I would recommend putting the light below the bin. With the extra light from the top, the plants in that bin may grow more just because they are able to acquire more light than the plants in the other bins.
This is the warm bin
Also we have place the ice packs underneath the cups in the bin.
Also we have place the ice packs underneath the cups in the bin.
Also we have place the ice packs underneath the cups in the bin.
Well the light is above the bin we can put it below the bin if we need to. (Steven) do you think we need to put it below the bin?
Hi.
We are looking at the temperature of the soil. This is mainly representing how the plants would grow in different areas of the world depending on their climate. Regarding the light, we have natural light that is helping the other plants grow. The lights are just their to help heat the soil. Thanks for the tips on the experimental design. I will go back and fix the words with temperature and climate.
Thank You,
Michayla
I think I get it. So the lights are close to the soil to heat the soil up without adding extra light for the leaves to be affected by. Is that correct? If you are only concerned with changing the temp of the soil, then I suppose you can just place the ice packs directly on top of the soil if there is enough room for the plants to grow.
I think it's important to know how temperature and climate are different, but also how they are related. The second point (how they are related) may be helpful for you in thinking about how the results from your experiment may be beneficial for growers of radishes to know for the future. So, I know you are interested about how radishes may grow in different parts of the world, but why is understanding temperature also important for how radishes may grow just in one part of the United States?
Hi all! How is the experimental setup going? My only concern for this was where your lights will be placed as a heat source. It was hard to get a mental picture of your setup, but if you place the lights towards the plants and don't have extra lights close to the plants in the other groups (control and cold), then the extra light may impact the growth of the plants more than the temperature.
I think I mentioned before that aside from growth, you may also want to measure weight of the plants at the end of the experiment, especially since this crop is mainly a root vegetable. Radishes are sometimes grown for their seeds, which can be impacted by temperature. Perhaps if you grow them long enough and they make seed, you could also count and/or weight the seeds as a measure of yield.
When reading your info, I noticed that "temperature" and "climate" were often used together or used to mean the same thing. However, there is a difference. Does someone know what that is? Are you looking at climate or temperature in this experiment?
Oh,
Michael meant planting not planing
Hi,
We have all the supplies. Today we are planing. We will also put a third thermometer in the controlled bin. We will probably be measuring the growth and also how much water we use. Do you have any more suggestions on what else we should measure?
Thank you for the feedback,
Michael
Hi Team!
Your mentor has some good questions and suggestions for you. I have more thermometers if you need them. Data collection is important - also be thinking about how often you will collect data. If you have all set up your journals, you'll have a place to record data. Make sure you all keep your journals up to date!
Can you edit your experimental design and add a bulleted list of the materials you will be using? Then you can describe the steps you will be following to set up and carry out your investigation. If you find you've left something out, make sure you edit as you go.
Things are sounding pretty good to me! Have you been able to get the supplies you need? One thing I noticed is that you call for only 2 thermometers, I guess so you can monitor the temperatures in the cold and hot tubs. However, it's also important that you measure the temp in the control as well. It's nice data to have because you can then specifically test to see if there are significant differences among your temps, which is important if you see a difference in the plants.
What data will you collect? Usually, there is a focus on above-ground differences, but since these are radishes, it may be important to see if there are differences with the radishes themselves (that are below-ground). If you have time and the resources, you may consider weighing the plants at the end to see if there is a difference in biomass.
Steven,
Please make comments on our experimental design. If it is okay just tell us and we will prepare to plant. However if there are any faults just tell us about them and we will do our best t fix it!
Michael
Steven
In the info page we have been writing out our experimental designs as well as other answerable questions. Hope to write back soon,
Michael
Steven,
How are you? I am well. We are still trying to gather the correct supplies for our experiments to go smoothly. Michayla is going to bring in our storage tubs for our greenhouse, and for the plants to grow in. We are trying to find a good container to plant in, but none of us seem to have the right stuff yet. I am planning on asking the lunch crew if I can borrow around 18-21 of their styrofoam cups that they use as fruit cups. Assuming that they are oky with this we will plant one seed in each cup. I have been taking research for our group on all of the requiremets for planting our seeds lie seed depth, watering, P.H level, thriving temperatures, germination temperatures, and planting tips.
Michael
Hi,
Those ideas were great! Thank you. We were thinking of using the storage container tubs the only thing we were wondering is how the plants will get air?
I wouldn't be too concerned with plants getting air. Remember, plants take in carbon dioxide from the air. CO2 should be able to make it in through the plastic, so long as you don't seal the tub closed. You could always try to poke a couple small holes in the tub if you are worried, although then some of the heat/cold may escape. If you do poke holes, I'd recommend they be on the sides of the containers, as heat rises and would escape quicker through the top, while cold air sinks and would escape from the bottom. It would be great, too, if you have a thermometer to measure the temperature in each container during your experiment.
Hi,
We were wondering what ways we could heat and cool the soil. So far we were thinking of using a heating pad and putting that under the pot of soil or using hot water to water the plant. As far as cooling, we were thinking of either bringing the soil outside for a few minutes, using cold water to water the plant or putting ice packs under the pot of plants. We are also going to plant two pots of normal plants that we are going to just use normal water and soil. We are looking for suggestions on other ways to heat or cool the soil.
Thanks,
Michayla
HI Michayla,
I like many of your suggested ways to heat an cool. I work on heat with quinoa, and I heat my plants in 2 ways. In some cases, I only want to heat the roots, so I place a heating coil in the soil. You can get these at any hardware store. To heat the shoot, I either place my plants in a tent or I take them to a different greenhouse that is already hotter. For your work, if you just use a general heating pad, it may only heat the roots; however, if the roots are not long enough in the pot, you may only heat the bottom of the soil. If you can, I would recommend trying to make some sort of tent/greenhouse to heat your plants. It could be something as simple as these and placing them in the sun or near a light bulb:
http://www.thejoyofplants.co.uk/sites/default/files/greenhouse_0.jpg
Perhaps the problem with those approaches is that if you give more light to the heat treated plants and less light to the cold treated ones, then light becomes variable and it would be difficult to see if your results were due to light or temp differences.
Maybe instead you could get tubs like this and place frozen cold packs in one and a heating pad or something in the other: http://thegardeningcook.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/green3.jpg
I'm not sure how long the cold packs would last, so you may have to have two sets, one you are using and another to replace them with once they unfreeze. If you do use clear tubs, then you would place cold packs in one for the cold treatment and place a lid on it to keep the cold in. You would use another clear tub but instead place a heating pad in there and place the lid on it to keep the heat in. I would then make sure each tub gets the same amount of light.
Are those ideas helpful at all?
As a follow-up, I was thinking that you don't need huge tubs. So, if you could just find plastic containers with lids (such as these that I already suggested or something from the grocery store), you could place them both in light, but to one add cold packs. You do want to make sure they are deep enough for the plant to have enough room to grow as tall as it can, so keep that in mind.
Steven,
We have come to a decision that we are going to change our topic. Instead of studying wind we have decided to switch our research topic to effects of soil temperature. We have decided to grow radish as our plant, and we are going to have radish growing in cold temperatures, warm temperatures, and in normal conditions. Sorry about the switch.
Michael
No problem, Michael. This happens a lot in science. In fact, I was initially interested in invasive species, which I studied for a while, but then I decided I wanted to work in agriculture, so I took the skills I learned and switched! It's important to do something you are interested in and that you can do with the resources you have at hand!
Steven
Do you have any suggestions on how many radish seeds we should plant per pot? We are going to begin researching radish seeds to figure out all of the requirements for planting them. (Seed depth, distance from each other, when to water, sunlight required ect.)
Hi Michael,
The way we typically start an experiment from seed is to figure out how many you will want, and then add several more to that. I don't know how well radish seeds germinate, but, for example, if you want 9 plants to test (which would be 3 per group - the minimum I would recommend), then I would try to germinate maybe 15. I am doing this right now with my quinoa seeds, and what I see is that some types of quinoa have seeds that all germinate, while others only half or less germinate. Since we don't know how "good" these radish seeds are, I suggest trying to germinate a good number extra to be safe.
Also, we typically germinate seeds either by having one in each of many very small pots or many seeds in one large pot. Once we have enough germinated, then we transfer each seedling into separate larger pots and divide the pots up into their experimental groups.
I hope that helps! Let me know if you have any questions.
Hi Crazy Coconuts,
How wind impacts plant growth is an interesting research idea. This is more of a physical force than other types of stress, such as lack of water or soil nutrients. What would an ideal plant look like to tolerate a very windy environment? More practically for your work, in what ways do you think it may affect plant growth, especially as it relates to a plant used for agriculture?
Steven
Hi Steven,
What interests us most about agronomy is the effect of wind on plant growth. This is what we decided to do for our project.