Team - great PPT presentation!  I especially liked the last slide Glad I could help a little!  Also be sure to thank your teacher; you are lucky to have a great teacher like Ms. Buzzell - she's the best!

My introductory college biology students are doing similar research projects now.  I hope that their work is as good as yours!

Great work and have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  Steve

Super job Team!!!  I'm very impressed with the excellent work you've done.  You should be proud.  I'm happy to have been a part of your team.  Steve

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.

After the end of the session, we will be updating the platform and archiving groups and projects, after which time new updates/posts will not be able to be added to projects or groups. You have until Friday, November 19, 2021, to post ALL of your updates, comments, and goodbyes. Please come back and visit the PlantingScience Project Gallery anytime to view this project in the future. You can search the Gallery by keyword, team name, topic, or school name.

Good bye for now.

Warm regards,

The PlantingScience Team

Hi All!  You've been busy again!  Nice job.  Your conclusions are coming along great.  It looks like you are nearly finished.  I like the way you basically have separate sections in the conclusions for the data including sections on: (a) how salt affects height of seedlings, (b) how salt affect whether the seeds are happy (i.e., growing upright and looking healthy), (c) how salt affects seed germination.  So, what overall conclusion can you make?  Can the seedlings tolerate any salt?  how much is too much?  Is this amount what you would expect in the ocean, or even on a roadside after winter salting?  I'm impressed with your work.  You should be proud.  Steve

Hi Dr.Steve

       Thank you for being over mentor and helping us in this experiment and we will be adding a presentation next week.

Anthony and crew

Hi Team.  Wow.  I'm impressed. Nice work with your data analysis and journals.  You've done a terrific job plotting and revising your graphs.  Looks like you have some obvious conclusions.  Keep up the great work.  Steve

Hi Team.  You've been busy!  Your graphs look great.  Here are a few suggestions:

Graph - looks great.  I would personally leave off the values for the data points since this makes the graph look a little cluttered.  This is a personal choice.  Otherwise, it looks great.  What can you conclude from this graph?  

Graph 1 - This one is pretty though I don't understand why there are only seeds germinated on the last day for the green treatment.  I think an even better graph would be to plot % germination on the Y axis and treatment / salt conc on the X axis.  

Graph 2 - I'd plot the same kind of summary graph as above.  Although i love the term "happy seeds" you will want to define what you mean, or use a better term.  

Graph 3 - looks great.  It would be helpful if you could label the treatments under the bars on the X axis.

Now, what can you conclude from all of this wonderful data?

hope you had a great Halloween weekend.  Steve

Hi Everyone,

You have been working hard with documenting your experiments, so please make sure that your most recent journal has been uploaded to your Planting Science Files tab. The file name cannot contain your last name, and it needs to be downloaded as a pdf. Please do not attach Google docs!!

Hi Dr. Saupe, 

We have completed our data collection and are working on our graphs. I will upload all of mine. 

Cadence

Hi Planting Protagonists,

Please let your mentor know that you have completed collecting data and make sure you post your graphs and go to this Planting Science resource page . Your group needs to answer all these questions - in writing. Post your answers here on the blog so your mentor can give you feedback. 

Looks like you've gotten some cool results that support your hypothesis.  Happy Halloween

Hi Team.  sounds great.  You have lots of great data and should be able to make some good conclusions.   You have lots of analyzing you can do (see my previous note).  I'm looking forward to seeing your results.  all the best, Steve  

Also, I forgot to add that we are doing our final measurements today

-Owen

Hi Steve, we are doing our final experiments and are wrapping up the experiment most of our plants are almost dead only the 2 0g are nice and healthy plus they are standing up straight

Yours Truly - Owen+Group

Great question.  If they are about to die, it is probably time to think about ending the experiment.  Perhaps take your final measurements today and then end it for all seedlings.  Also, it would be good to take data on appearance of seedlings and number upright vs lying down as we discussed.  

Hi. Dr.Steve

Most of the plants have fallen over and we don't know if we should measure the ones lying on the soil. Those plants don't look healthy and we think they will die soon. 

Anthony and crew

Hi.  no worries.  It would have been a little harder to explain otherwise :-)  great data.  hope your final analysis is going well.  Steve

Hello Dr. Saupe,

I realized that I accidentally typed 12 instead of 10. Sorry about that.

Cadence

Hi Again.  one interesting thing I noticed is that in the 5 g salt germination treatment you had 12 seedlings but only put in 10.  How do you explain that result?  :-)  all the best, Steve

Hi Team.  It was great to meet you and Shan this morning and have an opportunity to chat.  I enjoyed it very much.

I like the journals and images you've uploaded.  Great work.  

As we discussed, other observations you might want to quantify are (a) the number/percent of plants growing upright and not wilted; (b) final weight of one seedling in each treatment.  

Possible graphs you can make are:  % seed germination (y axis) vs. salt concentration (x axis); average plant height (y axis) vs. salt concentration; average seedling weight at conclusion (y axis) vs salt conc; % plants growing upright (y axis) vs. salt concentration. 

To calculate an average:  divide number by the total then multiply by 100.  Say for seed germination, if 10 germinated and you planted 10 then percent germination equals 10/10 x 100 = 100%.

lot's of fun data to analyze.  all the best, Steve 

Thank you for showing up and coming to the meeting today. Also thank you for all the suggestions.

Sincerely, -Owen

Hi Team.

 Just a friendly reminder that you will have a zoom meeting with Dr. Saupe at 10:10am today. You will be using the same zoom link for the meeting. 

Thanks,
Shan 

Hi Team.  wow, you've been busy!  Lots of great data.  Now it's time to analyze it.  Perhaps we can chat about that tomorrow, so i won't say much now.  You can certainly plant the seedlings from your germination expt though as long as you have enough growing in your treatments there is probably not a need to do so.  

So, can you tell if your treatment had/has an effect on seed germination or seedling growth?

Talk soon.  Steve

Hi Dr. Steve,

Mrs. Buzzell and all of us are wondering if we should plant the seeds from the germination experiment or not. 

Sorry for not sending you this before but here is my science journal so far. 

10/08/2021-We planted seeds and created the salt solutions. 

10/13/2021- Some of the seeds have started to sprout. We just added 25 mL of normal water with no salt today. 

-0g A- Very dry, no seeds sprouted. It is a possibility that we forgot to initially water the plant or the soil just didn’t soak up the water and it evaporated.

-0g B- Much more wet than the other control, but no seeds have sprouted in this container either. 

-5g A- Ben is doing this experiment at home 

-5g B- Ben is doing this experiment at home. 

-10g A- Wet, no seeds sprouted 

-10g B- Wet, 3 out of 10 seeds sprouted 

-15g A- Wet, 2 out of 10 seeds sprouted 

-15g B- Wet, none sprouted

-20g A- Wet, 7 out of ten seeds sprouted

-20g B- Wet, 4 out of ten seeds sprouted

10/14/2021- Quite a few of the plants have sprouted. We watered them with 25 mL of normal water. We added 200 mL of extra water to 0g A because we came to the conclusion that it wasn’t watered on the first day.

10/18/21- We started the salt portion of the experiment. We will also start our measurements today.  All plants are currently that same color.

10/19/2021- We took the heights of the plants and some of the plants and some of the plants were drooping. We worked on the germination experiment

Plant condition for in pot plants

Average Height for pot plants 

Germination experiment # sprouted 

The blank spots were where we ran out of time. 

Hi Team.  Were we supposed to Zoom this AM?  I was logged in for about 20 minutes.  If you are still interested in Zooming, we can try to schedule again.  I am available next week, MWF at 10:10.  all the best, Steve

Hi Team, 

One of you needs to upload their journal and data table so Steve can see your progress. Uploading photos will help, too. You can login to Planting Science on your phone to upload your photos or see me and I can help you. Please make sure this is posted Thursday!

Hi Team! I am not seeing any posts to your mentor on this blog since Cadence posted the experimental design on 10/7. If you are not posting regularly, your mentor has no idea what is happening with your project! Please make sure you are posting here 2-3 times a week (take turns) - you can copy/paste the entries that you made in your journals. It would be really helpful if your mentor could see your data table, the observations you've made so far, and some photos would be very helpful as well. Make sure that you are uploading jpg files - if you use an iPhone, you have to turn off the Live option because the HEIC files do not seem to be compatible with the website. Add the photos using the File tab in the left side bar. See me if you need help!

Keep up the good work!

Hi Teams!

It's great to see plants growing! Hopefully all groups will see some growth by Monday. A few things to keep in mind:

Water - you may need to adjust the amount! If you have 100 mL daily written in your experimental design, but your plants are sitting in soil soup, it's ok to record the observation that they don't need that much water, and adjust the amount / frequency of watering (unless amount of water is your independent variable). 

Recording data: 

Data tables are great for organizing data! Add your unit of measurement to the heading of each column - and just record numbers on your table. It's a good idea to include 0's to show no growth so it is clear that nothing grew.

Keep up the great work and keep asking questions!

When averaging your plant heights, don't forget to divide by the total number of plants in the pot. If you notice that most of your plants are an average of 2 cm tall, but one group stands out at 16 cm, check to see if it really is that much larger. 

Make sure you are giving other group members a chance to measure and discuss your observations to see if anyone notices differences you may have missed.

Hi Everyone! 

We have groups that have started planting today! Very exciting!! Some groups have questions because we are not in school after today until 10/13, so that will affect plants that are getting a reduced amount of light and it may affect some groups watering schedules.

I hope to have photos of projects added soon, and the students are starting their science journals today!

Students are also very excited about upcoming Zooms with mentors. 

Keep up the good work!

Hi Team, 

Your plan is lacking a few details - how many seeds per pot? How to set this up? How to plant the seeds? How are you mixing the salt/water? What are you storing it in?

Also - upload to section above - even if it needs editing still!

What you think about this 

Materials

-200 cress seeds 

-5 cups of soil 

-5 Liters of water

-50 grams of salt 

-5 Paper Towels

-5 petri dishes 

-5 water container- Soda bottles?

-5 graduated cylinders 

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

1. Put soil in containers  

2. mix water

3. Put 200 ml of water in soil

4. Soak paper towels  in water 

5. Place paper towels in petri dishes

6. Plant seeds in soil 

7. Put some seeds in petri dishes

8. Add 25-50 ml of water weekly depending soil wetness and measure

Hi Dr. Saupe,

We were talking to Mrs. Buzzell she said the we should use ppt.  I googled it and it said that one mL equals one gram.  So were thinking for the ppt that we could do grams of salt to a L of water because it would take 1000 grams of salt to reach 1 Liter of water.  We we thinking of doing 20 grams, 15, grams, 10 grams, 5 grams and 0 grams of salt for our amounts.  Each of those mixed in to 1 L of water. Do you think those would be good measurements to use. To make sure that all the measurements stayed the same we would premix them in a container. 

     Cadence and group

Hi Team! 

Dr. Steve has some great recommendations! We live near the Great Bay estuary - where salt water from the bay meets and mixes with fresh river water. If you look around Great Bay, you'll notice plants growing up to the water's edge. Here's a link to the Great Bay Estuarine Reserve (where I did an internship many years ago) https://www.greatbay.org/60137-2/ that has information on the range of normal salinity in the bay. This might help you with deciding how much salt to use! 

I am hoping to see your experimental design posted tomorrow!

Hi All.  just checking in.  Your research questions looks great.  We usually like to express predictions as IF...Then statements.  IF salt affects the growth rate, THEN plants treated with salt will be shorter and grow more slowly than controls.  IF salt affects germination, THEN. . . and so on.  

One thing you might want to do now is to figure out HOW MUCH salt should be in your treatment.  For example, how much is in salt water ocean?  That would be by far the max, and it would be best to be even less.  What about salt along roads - how much in the soil, etc?  

lots of cool things to think about.   all the best, Steve

Dr. Steve

Today we are going to write out our research question and predictions.  Then we will write out our experimental design if we have time. If we do can you tell us if it is any good?

Anthony and Crew 

Hi All.  Sounds great and it looks like you will soon be collecting data which is the fun part. Looking forward to hearing more. All the best. Steve

Hi Dr. Saupe, 

We are starting to work on our final research question and our predictions. We think the germination part is a great idea and we should go ahead with both (if you agree.) Mrs. Buzzel said that she could give us twenty seeds to work with because not many people are doing Cress.  We think that they way you have the measurments should work perfectly. 

Cadence and Group

Hi team, 

How’s the planning for your experiment? Please make sure to share your ideas and communicate with your mentor, so your mentor could provide feedback for your experimental design. 

Thank you very much.

Shan