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.
Hi, Team! A second try at your experiment! This is great, because it sounds like you've learned from what happened the first time. I think it's okay that you don't know when exactly each radicle emerges over the weekend, as long as there are differences you do see among the treatments.
Go ahead and reduce the amount of water, but try to measure how much water in milliliters each treatment is getting!
Hi Simon,
Here are some of our observations. (look in the group photo)
Would you please upload this file to the Files section of this webpage? For me that section is on the left side. That way I can see it bigger.
Hi Simon,
I posted an image of our data table for trial one in files. You might want to take a look.
Hi Simon. Do you think that it makes sense to half the amounts of water that we used last time? We were thinking of doing that, but if you think that we should make a more drastic change, we would like to know. Please tell us the amount that makes the most sense to you. Thank you. We will be starting the next 2 experiments today.
Hi team,
Something that has happened to our seeds is that they have begun to sprout radicles. 13 seeds sprouted radicles overall. 4 with the least amount of water, 2 in the 'little less' one, 4 in the control, 3 with the 'little more' and none in the double water one. Something that was hard for our group was the times that we were able to check the seeds because we had class times different each day. Also, over the weekend, we were not able to tell which day they sprouted on, so that was tricky. We had a good first trial, and have just begun our second experiment today. The first one is finished.
Hi Simon,
Something that has happened to our seeds is that the control experiment, the one that is supposed to work the best, is the only one that hasn't sprouted radicles, and dish one is doing the best. (least amount of water.) We think this might be a miscalculation of the amount of water, as we were in a hurry to get to lunch, and might be something to fix in our next procedure. Something that our group found hard to do was to know when the radicles sprouted over the weekend.
Hi Simon,
We have finished our first experiment today!! we are starting our second experiment tomorrow. When we started our experiment we realized we added too much water so when we start our next experiment we will be changing the control.
I am wondering how you will tell if some amount of water kills soybean. What data will you collect? Are you going to measure anything about your soybeans?
Hi Simon,
One of the confounding variables, is time. We are not able to check the seeds each day at the same time, and that is not so great. We also had some experimental errors. Unfortunately, we think that we did your equation wrong. We beleive that we added way too much, and maybe that is because we are growing them on paper towles, but we need to re-do the formula. So far, only the ones with the smallest amount of water are germinating.
Hi, Team!
No worries about your initial errors! Experiments often don’t work out as planned the first time. If you want to change the amount of water from now on, feel free to adjust and write down any changes or additions to the experimental design that you make. Maybe you want to cut water amounts in half or by a fourth. Maybe you just want to mist them all a little bit from now on. Maybe you want to water certain plants less often than others. There are different ways to reduce the total amount of water your soybeans get.
I don’t think it’s a problem to check on your seeds each day at the same time. As long as you are checking all of your plants at the same time as each other you’ll still be able to compare your plants.
An interesting thing that I learned about soybeans - and I suppose other plants - Is that a seed needs to take in about 50% of its weight in water before it can begin breaking though the seed coat.
It goes to show how important water is! How goes figuring out how much water to give your five treatments?
Hi Simon,
Yesterday I learned in my extra research that the food inside the plant that helps it germinate when it can't do photosynthesis is called the endosperm. That's its food, water is its drink.
Endosperm is very important for many seeds. Coconuts have two kinds — the solid white layer and the liquid coconut "milk" — while other plants have less!
Today we recorded measurements about how big the seeds are, and we took qualitative measurements about how they looked. We are going to plant them today, so we are currently figuring out the water amounts.
Sounds like you’re really getting to know your seeds! Awesome work!
Hi, team — let's talk rain measurements! How much water there is in a container is typically measured in volume. Volume is 3D, and amounts come in liters, milliliters, gallons, pints, cups, teaspoons, etc. Measurements of distances describe the length of something. Length is linear and comes in meters, millimeters, inches, feet, yards, lightyears, etc.
So it's always seemed strange to me that 'the amount of rain water falling from the sky' is measured in lengths (inches or millimeters)! I looked up why, and it seems like there is an old tradition that thinks about rain if it were filling up a bathtub as large as the land people were interested in. Sadly, volumes do not convert directly into lengths.
So we need to measure the surface area of your soil! If you have a circle container, the soil area = 3.1416 * radius (in inches) * radius (in inches). If you have a rectangular/square container, the soil area is the length (in inches) * width (in inches). Once you have your area, you then multiply that area by 0.1 inches for the volume of rainwater needed for soybeans to grow! The volume will be in cubic inches, but that can be converted directly to milliliters.
I'm sure that was a lot of math! Let me know if you have questions as you work through it yourselves!
Hi Team.
Today we started our experiment, only doing the first few steps of the procedure, but we did follow them accurately. We worked on an awesome spreadsheet to store all of our data. It looks pretty cool. Our soybean seeds are soaking, and everything is going according to plan.
Hi Simon,
We have 5 petri dishes, each with 5 soybean seeds. The difference is the amount of water. The actual amount of water I already posted. But I still wonder if that is the correct conversion.
HI Simon,
Today in class we observed our seeds and prepared for Wednesday. On Wednesday we will put our seeds inside the Petri dishes and add the water. For today, we took pictures and soaked them so there ready for tomorrow.
HI Simon,
Today in class we observed our seeds and prepared for Wednesday. On Wednesday we will put our seeds inside the Petri dishes and add the water. For today, we took pictures and soaked them so there ready for tomorrow.
Hi Simon, we have a question. The graduated cylinders that we use are not as big as the petri dishes, so mm. is kind of inconvenient. Should we convert to ml.?