| Explore | Our group all have gardens at our homes. We all know that plants need water, sunlight, carbon dioxide, nutrients, and soil to grow. Different plants need different amounts of water and sunlight depending on what type of plant it is. Plants might also need stakes to help support it depending on what type of plant it is. Not to mention that the plants can have different roots. Some questions we have about plants are what does a plant need to survive without soil? Does it matter what liquid you use in order to grow a plant? How does soil have the nutrients plants need? Is there a way to speed up the growing process of plants? |
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| Research Question | Does the amount of soil affect how quickly a plant, starting at a seed, can grow? We came up with this question because we know soil is necessary for plants to grow, so, we wanted to see if how much soil affects how quickly a plant can grow. |
| Predictions | We think when the radishes are exposed to less soil it will take longer for it to sprout and it would look different and be a different size then the typical radish would. |
| Experimental Design | We would like to experiment what would happen when we decreased the regulated amount of soil by half and then that by half. We would like to perform this with three of each soil amount. So, we will be putting six seeds in each pot. This will help to support our claim more strongly with more evidence. We are conducting our experiment on radishes. We think that this will be the best possible plant because radishes have to grow in the ground and we are excited to see what will happen with less soil. We would give our plants 20 ml of water measured from a granulated cylinder every other day of the week and give it the same amount of sunlight just with less soil. We are planning to conduct our experiment over 5-6 weeks. We are hoping that doing this will help us see if the growing process can be sped up and if plants can truly sprout and grow with less soil. We are planning on using six seeds per pot. |
| Conclusion | The control plants (the plants that had the correct amount of soil) grew the strongest, fastest, and healthiest. The first possible explanation of our results is that the more soil a plant has, the more water it can hold. Therefore, the plants don't get dried up as easily. The second possible explanation is that due to being out of school for multiple periods of time, we were unable to water and care for our plants. So, the plants started to shrink and dry out. Sadly, because of this, none of the plants survived. However, our data still supports our claim. Our original prediction was that the pots with less soil would take longer to grow, be smaller, and be weaker than the pots with more soil. The data collected, supports our original prediction by showing that the plants with more soil grew faster, taller, and stronger than the plants with less soil. Some future experiments that could be done to expand on the results of this experiment consist of seeing if doing this experiment long term would affect the outcome and what would happen if we had a better routine for caring for the plants. The fastest, strongest, and healthiest plants were the plants with the largest amount of soil (or the control plants). |
| Investigation Theme | WOS |
| Teacher Name | Rebecca Buzzell |
| School Name | Nottingham School |
| Session | Spring 2024 |
| About this Project | This is hands down the best group I've worked with on PlantingScience! Their communication has been excellent on the platform and with their science journals that they share often! They were very creative with their experiment, and haven't lost hope with the couple of set backs that they have had. I'm really looking forward to seeing how they draw their conclusions! -- Cari Ritzenthaler, Mentor |