| Explore | Our group knows a little bit about plants. Our group knows that plants need water, good soil, and sunlight. We also know that many plants have different genes depending on their ancestors. Will the growth change using different types of lights? How will the growth be affected if we use warmer water? |
|---|---|
| Research Question | How will the plant's growth change, using different types of fertilizer? We came up with this question when thinking about how plants grow faster with fertilizer. We are studying if the growth would change if we use natural fertilizer rather than artificial fertilizer. This relates back to biology because it shows how plants grow differently given different conditions. |
| Predictions | We think that artificial fertilizer will make the plant grow faster, but the plant might be more unhealthy than if we made our own natural fertilizer. The natural fertilizer will make it grow at a decent rate and will end up more healthy. We believe this because artificial substances make things unhealthy and usually make something large or taste better, whereas natural fertilizer is usually more healthy for things. |
| Experimental Design | We predict that artificial fertilizer will make the plant grow faster, but the plant might be more unhealthy. The natural homemade fertilizer will make the plant grow at a decent rate and might end up more healthy than artificial fertilizer. In this project, we will be making the plant grow faster using fertilizer and also try to keep the plants healthy. The fertilizer will stay the same throughout this project. Our prediction shows how certain substances make plants grow faster, but some substances used to make a plant more unhealthy and we want to see what the are growth rates and how they differ. |
| Conclusion | My prediction was that the store bought fertilizer will grow faster, but the plant won’t be as healthy. The compost will make the plant grow at a healthy rate. The plants that grow in normal dirt will be healthy, but not very big. My hypothesis was wrong, the seeds we planted in compost (mixed with dirt) didn’t grow at all. The plants growing in dirt and the plants growing in fertilizer grew at about the same rate and ended up being the same size. The average height for the dirt and the fertilizer was 10 - 13 cm tall. I think that the seeds in compost and dirt didn’t grow because there may have been salt in some of the food scraps we put in the compost or the vegetable oil we added could have caused the plant to be unable to absorb the water we fed the plant. During our experiment we had to restart because our compost wasn’t working. Also, we believe that our plants may have fallen over. When we collected the data from the second time we tried the experiment it showed that the seeds in the compost didn’t grow either. That is when we realized that the problem was the compost. We also could have over watered the plants. Another thing I learned was that the plants in regular dirt and the plants in fertilizer (mixed with dirt) had a similar growing rate and height. If you want to grow plants then you probably don’t need to by fertilizer from the store. In the future if I make compost I would make sure that there is no salt in any of the food scraps, also I wouldn’t add oil. I would also use a measuring spoon to water the plants to ensure that they don’t get overwatered. I learned a lot about plants from this project. |
| Investigation Theme | WOS |
| Grade Level | Middle School Students (grades 6,7,8) |
| School Name | Nottingham School |
| Session | Spring 2019 |