Info
Explore | Wade: On thing that I learned about seed germination is that gravitropism is the sense that plants have that allows them to know which way is up or down no matter what way that they are planted. Ezra: One thing that I learned about soybeans, the plants that we will be using for our experiment,... |
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Research Question | What will happen if we water our plant with the incorrect amount of water? Will more water kill our plant? Will less water make it grow shorter? |
Predictions | Our hypothesis is: If we water our soybean plant more, then we think that it will not kill it, but it will be less healthy than our control experiment, with the right amount of water. However, we do think that less water than it needs will kill it. We think this because a lot of the websites that... |
Experimental Design | Our independent variable is the amount of water. What we will be measuring, the dependent variable is how much it grows, and how fast. Our procedure is as follows: Day one 1 Observe the unsoaked seeds and take photos 2 Collect 5 Petri dishes and label (1-5) 3 Cut 5 paper towel circles and... |
Conclusion | We learned that the amounts of water that soybeans need change when you go from soil to paper towel. We also learned that a seed needs to take in about 50% of its weight in water before it can begin breaking through the seed coat. But overall, we learned that when soybeans don’t get enough water,... |
About this Project |
Updates
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. 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
Thank you, Team Pinta Bintas! You have all been great and very thoughtful about your experiments! It’s also good of you to reflect on what improvements could be made to your experiments, as there are always ways to improve laboratory work. Still you did an excellent job researching seed germination, setting up your trials, and making careful observations!
I wish you all a healthy and fun rest of your school year! All my best!
Thanks for your hard work, Ezra. Glad you’re feeling better!
It’s great to see that teams from your school are wrapping up and posting conclusions. Enjoy the final stages of your project, and feel free to post any final comments or questions you have for your mentors.
It’s great to see that teams from your school are wrapping up and posting conclusions. Enjoy the final stages of your project, and feel free to post any final comments or questions you have for your mentors.
Hi Simon,
Our teacher said that this is the last post that we can do, so I would like to thank you for all of the time and consideration that you put into this project. You really helped us out with the conversions, because it would have took a lot more time to do those, and that helped our experiment. Here is our conclusion:
Our question was: How would different amounts of water affect seed germination? Our hypothesis was: If we water our soybean plant more, then we think that it will not kill it, but it will be less healthy than our control experiment, with the right amount of water. However, we do think that less water than it needs will kill it. We think this because a lot of the websites that we have looked at say that too. We learned that a seed needs to take in about 50% of its weight in water before it can begin breaking through the seed coat. This means that in our experiment, the dish with the least amount of water may not provide enough water for the seed to begin germination. The data that we gathered does not support our hypothesis, at least the 2nd and 3rd trial (we accidently did too much water the first time). The petri dish with the least amount of water did germinate a lot, and the one with the most did not, and the control was the similar to the dishes that didn’t get enough water.
I think that it is kind of nice to have your conclusion not supported once in a while because it makes the entire thing more interesting. One of my assigned notecards for our presentation was what did we learn. Here is what I wrote.
We learned that the amounts of water that soybeans need change when you go from soil to paper towel. We also learned that a seed needs to take in about 50% of its weight in water before it can begin breaking through the seed coat. But overall, we learned that when soybeans don’t get enough water, they can germinate, and when they get too much water, it is harder for them to germinate and do well in the photosynthesis process.
Anyways, Ezra has been sick for the past few days so you might not hear from him but we are appreciative of all of the help that you give, and we hope that you had a nice time on your trip, and that you keep helping kids through planting science.
- Wade
HI Simon,
I want to thank you for being our mentor! working with you has really been fun. You have shared information that we probably woldnt have found on the internet. We have finally wrapped up our lab and now working on reflections and conclusions. as a group, we wanted to share some final thoughts and comments about our lab. Our question was: How would different amounts of water affect seed germination? Our hypothesis was: If we water our soybean plant more, then we think that it will not kill it, but it will be less healthy than our control experiment, with the right amount of water. However, we do think that less water than it needs will kill it. We think this because a lot of the websites that we have looked at say that too. We learned that a seed needs to take in about 50% of its weight in water before it can begin breaking through the seed coat. This means that in our experiment, the dish with the least amount of water may not provide enough water for the seed to begin germination. The data that we gathered does not support our hypothesis, at least the 2nd and 3rd trial (we accidentally did too much water the first time). The petri dish with the least amount of water did germinate a lot, and the one with the most did not, and the control was similar to the dishes that didn’t get enough water. For experimental errors, we had two categories, confounding variables and mistakes. One of our mistakes was that we based all of our data on a graph, little did we know that the graph was for seeds in soil. This was a problem because our Petri dishes were soaked in water, causing floods in almost every dish. when it came to the second experiment we cut the water in half, there for the seed weren't drenched. another error occurred in our third experiment when we accidentally added to little water in dish one causing the seeds to dry up and no consistent data. some confounding variables were that classes were at different times and there were weekends in the middle of our labs causing the labs to be different lengths. We learned that the amounts of water that soybeans need change when you go from soil to paper towel. We also learned that a seed needs to take in about 50% of its weight in water before it can begin breaking through the seed coat. But overall, we learned that when soybeans don’t get enough water, they can germinate, and when they get too much water, it is harder for them to germinate and do well in the photosynthesis process. thank you, Simon, for being our mentor you have helped us in ways our teachers couldn't. Good luck with your job as a science mentor.
sincerely,
Ashna
Hi, team. Your understanding of your hypothesis makes sense to me. I wonder if you are all in agreement? It’s interesting to think why a germinating seed would grow more with less water! Perhaps it is searching harder for water when it senses water is scarce? And if water is even scarcer still, it simply cannot grow as well. What are your thoughts about what’s going on?
Hi, team. Looking at your new chart, I think your hypothesis is not supported, at least in part! Can you tell me why I think that?
Dish 1: 3 ml. | Dish 2: 6 ml. | Dish 3: 12 ml. | Dish 4: 18 ml. | Dish 5: 24 ml. | |
Averages | Water | Water | Water (Control) | Water | Water |
Day 1 | 6.6 | 6.6 | 6.6 | 6.6 | 6.6 |
Day 2 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 |
Day 3 | 11 | 11.5 | 11.5 | 11 | 10.5 |
Day 4 | 11 | 11.5 | 12 | 11.5 | 11 |
Day 5 | 14 | 22 | 15 | 13 | 12 |
Hi, team. It looks like something really showed itself by Day 5! The average measurement reall seemed to change then. Your chart doesn’t mention any measurement units, so be sure to add those when you can. I’m just assuming it’s cm of length of the germinating plant!
Hi, Wade — You made a good-looking graph that shows your data well! I like how to figured out to "stack" your points on top of each other at 0 and 4 germinated seeds; this shows all the dishes well. Additional data you could add is the amount of water for each dish, or substitute the name of the dish with the amount of water you used. Great job!
Hi, Team! I will be out of the country for two weeks, but I will still be able to help, answer questions, and read all about how your experiments are going. I just might be a little later than normal. Looking forward to seeing how Trial 2 compares with Trial 1!
Hi, Ashna — This a very clean and straightforward graph. I am able to easily see which dishes had more or fewer seeds germinate. In fact you don't even need to write "Germinated Seeds" on the bottom of your graph, because you have it written so clearly on your Y axis. I'm wondering what happened to Dish 5 between day 2 and 3? Did the radicle of the one germinating seed on day 2 go back inside of the seed the next day? :-)
Hi, Ezra — Nice choice with the bar graph! It describes the length of the seeds and radicles really well using heights of bars. It looks like you went with the date the seeds were measured, instead of time. Still it shows interesting and clear snapshots in time of what happened with different amounts of water!
Hi Simon,
My graph is of trial 1. I wanted to do trial 2 or 3 because they have better, more accurate data, but we are not finished with those trials. This graph is of how many total seeds had germinated each day. The whole reason that we changed trial 2 and 3 was that dish 1 did so well, and that dish had the least amount of water, so we decided to cut the amount of water in half for trial 2 and 3.
Hi Simon.
What do you think of my graph? It illustrates the total length of the seeds, including the radicles that sprouted. It is only for experiment one. You can view it in the files.
Hi Simon,
We will be making graphs of our data today. I am going to make a graph that shows the total seed length, including the radicles, over time. The graph will show how much water the batch had, how long it measured, and what time it was at. Do you know if this is possible with google sheets? If not, I will just include how much water, and the seed length.
I'm not sure I understand what you're looking to do, but I believe Google Sheets can make graphs. Like Excel.
If you want to graph the length over time, you can create bar plots for each of the times you measured. Or you can create a line graph that would be best shown counting the number of hours since you started — this would smooth out the lines for when you took measurements at different times on different days.
Hello, Team — Sounds like you've gotten things calibrated. With the control doing what you expect it to do, it will be interesting to see what happens with the other treatments.
Do you expect the seeds with less water to germinate before the seeds with more water?
Hi Simon,
I predict that the seeds with more water will actually germinate faster, when it is working properly.
Sounds like you're thinking about it. What do you mean about working properly?
Hi Simon,
When cutting the amount of water in half, our seeds are doing much better! So far some of our seeds have sprouted, our control sprouted first which is a good sign.
Hi Simon,
With only half of the water, the seeds are doing great! Our control sprouted first, which we think is a good sign. We will soon post photos of the new experiment in the files page.
This screenshot should show it better. The amounts accidentally got cut off in the last one. I have deleted the other one from files, and added this new one.
Great work, team!
Hi Simon,
I have learned that soybeans having too much water definitely kills the soybean seeds, but having not enough water they can survive with.
Great data, Team! I'd like to see what makes the different "Water" treatments different, when you make your next table.