| Explore | We know they use the process of photosynthesis, they're made of cells, and they get their nutrition from the sun. We learned about the different cells inside of plants and who discovered the cells. I'd want to know if we'd be able to make plant mutants, as in can we "breed" plants like different animals can make a mix of their species. Another question I have is if sugar is able to make celery bendable, would other spices put in water do the same and make the clerey bend? |
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| Research Question | Will more sugar or less sugar make celery bendy? We want to know if sugar will make celery bendy, leave the celery in its normal state, or make it more stiff. We came up with the question from someone's parent saying they once heard sugar could make things bendy, so we kind of just went with it. We already know that celery will become more bendy if left in water for a certain amount of time because the celery will soak up the water and expand. |
| Predictions | The celery could expand a bit more than when it did when it was placed in normal water. I think the sugar will help with expanding the celery but I think it'll still be only somewhat bendy. I think this because as I was reading a chapter in a book from class called "Some Assembly Required" by Neil Schubin where it said that plants with more chromosomes tend to be tastier and more vibrant. I thought that if sugar were to be added to the plant's water, it'd make the plant taste sweeter and possible expand more because of the sweetness. ? I also thought that maybe the sugar molecules would expand as a reaction from coming in contact with water. Maybe the water and sugar combination will require the celery to take more time to soak up the sugar since the sugar has to dissolve first. |
| Experimental Design | Our plan is to put 1/2 cup of water in five different cups. In each of the cups, we're going to place celery of the same length of 1 in and add different amounts of sugar to each cup, but leave one cup without sugar. We're then going to leave each cup in the fridge for 24 hours and see which cup will have the more bendy celery. A cup will have either 1 tbsp, 1/2 tbsp, 1 tsp, 1/2 tsp, or no sugar at all. |
| Conclusion | I think adding the sugar only helped a little bit since the celery wasn’t much more curved than what it started out as. I think the sugar helped make the celery bend since the molecules are bigger, combined with the water softening the celery because of how much the celery is absorbing. The last lab we did, the shortest celery was recorded to bend the most out of all three different sizes of celery, which is why we chose a shorter piece of celery to do our experiment with. We can try putting different things into water, different liquids, different plants, or change the amount of time the plant stays in the fridge. |
| Investigation Theme | CEL |
| Grade Level | High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12) |
| School Name | Ottawa Township High School |
| Session | Fall 2020 |