| Explore | Our group has background knowledge and experience with plants. First of all, Aidan knows that weeds can be destructive towards gardens and other plants. Quinn and I(Hannah) both have gardens at home that we sometimes help with. Sometimes in the summer Quinn and I grow edible plants in our gardens such as carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, and herbs such as cilantro, basil, and mint. In class our group has learned that plants need multiple things to grow. Some of these things consist of water and sunlight. One thing that Aidan and the rest of our groups wonders about plants is how they get the strength to break out of their seeds. Our group was also curious about photosynethesis and more about how it works. A final question of our group is what kinds of plants can survive flood conditions and how much water can they handle? These are just a few things our group knows about plants and a few things that we want to know more about. |
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| Research Question | Our research question for our group is how southern plants can survive and how they will act differently during a drought season. This is important because lots of families, companies, farmers, and restaurants depend on the crops they receive and the companies and farms depend on the income they receive from selling those southern crops. |
| Predictions | The drought simulation will most likely negatively effect the plants. We think this because almost all plants need a stable amount of water to produce good quality crops and survive without damage. |
| Experimental Design | The experimental design starts off with our materials which include 16 Seeds, 8 Pots, 8 cups of potting soil, Pot one and two: 100 mL of water a week(About five times)(healthy plant with no drought), Pot three and four: 75 mL of water a week(About five times) (a plant going through drought), Pot five and six: 50 mL inch of water a week(About five times)( a plant going through a bad drought), Pot seven and eight: 25 mL a week(About five times) (a plant going through extreme drought), Tape, Markers, Measuring, Cups, Scissors. Those may change throughout the project, but that is it for now. Next is the safety, for this project we will need to be safe for plant safety and wash our hands. We also can not eat any of the plants we our experimenting with. Also we will need to have clothing protecting. We will need to remove dangling jewelry. We will also have to secure loose sleeves or other loose articles. Finally is the procedure which is what we will be doing throughout our project which also may change too. The first step is measuring out all of the seeds, pots, potting soil, and water, and the second is to cut up different pieces of tape to write each measurements of water on. Also, you need write on the tape on the pots one and two write 100 mL, on pots three and two write 75 mL, on pot five and six write 50 mL and on pots seven and eight write 25 mL. Fourth of all, you need to put 1 cup of soil in each flower pot. Fifth of all, plant all the seeds one deep into the soil, and each of them one inch apart. As the experiment goes on and we are watering the plants, we are going to monitor the height and the coloring of the plants. |
| Conclusion | Our hypothesis at the beginning of this experiment was partially correct. This is because our group had said that the less water a pea plant is given the worse it would grow but as a matter of fact some plants that were given 25 ml of water every 3 days grew better than plants that were given 75 ml of water every 3 days. Our data showed this in numerous instances. For example, on April 4rth the two pots that were given 25 ml of water averaged out to 15 cm in height but the two pots on that same day that were given 100 ml of water only averaged out to 6 cm. Despite all this data and reasoning this may have occurred just because the plants that were given larger amounts may have been overwatered and mold growing on one of the 100ml pots may have affected growing. These are some pieces of evidence and reasoning that can show why our experiment ended with the conclusions it had. Despite our experiment being pretty thorough we did have a few problems that occured or accidents that we made along the way, like most scientists do. Something that occured to our plants towards the end of our experiment was that some of our plants wilted towards the end of the process. One of these simple mistakes was accidently spilling some water while watering a 50 ml pot during mid April. However, I don’t think this affected the experiment too much due to the fact that not much water was lost in the spill but you never know. Another slight issue that could have altered the results of this experiment is that towards the very beginning of the experiment we changed the amount of water we gave all the plants. This is because originally we had the water measurements in inches which we later realized was not a very practical unit for measuring water because an inch of water would vary depending on the container it was in. Mind you, this was only 3 days after our seeds were planted. Just like before, our group does not think this would have a big impact on the experiment but because of the different amount of water during sprouting time, a crucial time period for plants, it could have. I really wished we had improved on our consistency of watering to avoid this mistake at the starting stages of the project. These are a few rough patches that we had to face and deal with during our experiment. I wish we could investigate more about how drought affects pea plants and other crops, mostly crops grown in southern regions. This is because many important farming industries and farms are in the south where droughts are common and growing plants are important. For instance, if a drought caused a southern farmer’s corn crops to not grow it would have indirect, negative effects on many people and businesses. That’s why I think it would be beneficial to figure out more about how pea plants and other crops are affected by this weather so we could work towards finding solutions to the problem. On another note, if we pursued this experiment longer we could see how the water amounts influenced the taste of the vegetable produced by the plant. To sum this paragraph up, this is why our group and others should continue further research on this topic. In final matters, this conclusion shows how our hypothesis was both correct and incorrect, mistakes we made during the experiment, and why research on this topic should be further researched. |
| Investigation Theme | WOS |
| Grade Level | Middle School Students (grades 6,7,8) |
| School Name | Nottingham School |
| Session | Spring 2019 |