| Explore | We know how to plant and how to take care of plants because most of us have had or taken care of gardens. To plant and take care of a vegetable or flower you dig a small hole, put a seed into it, cover the hole, put a bit of water on it, then, as time goes on you continue to water it, making sure not to over water or under water. The questions that intrigue us are, “Why are plants and vegetables the colors they are and what affects the coloring”, “How many different categories of plants are there”, and “How do plants make air out of carbon dioxide”. |
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| Research Question | We want to test whether F40 Grow Lights or sunlight works better for plants. We are going to use a positive control, and the sunlight is our control group. We chose this question because it is interesting to us. |
| Predictions | We think that the F40 Grow Lights will grow plants better than sunlight. We think this because F40 lights are specialized to grow plants and the F40 Grow Lights will be on 24/7. We think that the sunlight light will grow the plants worse than the F40 Grow Lights because it is not specified for plant growth. |
| Experimental Design | We're planting Zea Mays in 6 different pots, 4 seeds per pot. The Zea Mays seeds will be 1.75-2.25 inches deep and 1-2 inches apart. 3 pots are under F40 plant lights with direct lighting 24/7 and 3 are under sunlight. Both sunlight and F40 plant light plants will get 2.5-3 centimeters of water a day. These plants will be growing for about 26 days and in these 26 days we’ll be recording the height of these plants to see if F40 or sunlight lights are better. |
| Conclusion | In conclusion, we figured out that F40 Grow Lights grow the Zea mays better than sunlight. The evidence supporting this includes a comparison of average plant mass, the grow light average mass is 2.3 grams and the sunlights average mass is 0.5 grams, the difference in mass is 1.8 grams, meaning the grow light's mass is 1.8 grams more than sunlight.Furthermore this is supported by the heights of these groups. The grow lights reached 29.8cm tall, and the sunlight group reached 26.4cm tall. In the beginning the sunlights were growing better than grow lights but that quickly changed with the grow lights surpassing the sunlight plants by 3.4cm. The sunlights also started dying, possibly as a result of less sun because of the season change and that is probably why they stopped growing so well. This could apply to the future because if the sun disappears then we would know that F40 grow lights do work, we’d also want to test how much water is best for plants. Different plants we’d like to use if this scenario were to happen are lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, peppers, peas, and more beneficial and edible plants. |
| Investigation Theme | WOS |
| Teacher Name | Rebecca Buzzell |
| School Name | Nottingham School |
| Session | Fall 2021 |