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.?
We chose the soybean seed because we knew that it was a faster germination seed and it was also a seed that was available from Christine. We know that this seed is often used in cooking and has a very peelable seed coat after being soaked in water overnight. This seed germinates fairly faster and needs about 0.10 inches of water per day. It is a good seed for our experiment because we need it to survive tough conditions and the soybean seed can do that. Overall, the soybean seed is a very good seed for our project, and most importantly, available.
Hi, team!
Available resources can often constrain your experiments as a scientist. But in this case I think it's a good thing. Soybeans are a great seed choice!
If you know 0.10 inches of water per day is what soybeans need to grow, how much water will you be using for the other four treatments?
Hi Simon. We really need help. We would like to know your opinion. Should we do 5 experiments? One flood, one really rainy, one control, one less rain, one drought? Or should we do 3 experiments? Only the control, flood, and drought.
Hi, team — I really like the idea of five different levels of your independent variable. You could measure out the amounts of water with cups or a graduated cylinder. 1: Normal amount; 2: Half normal amount; 3: 1/4th normal amount; 4: One and a half times normal amount; 5: Double normal amount. Those are some options. The more you do, the easier it will be to see a trend in your data!
It was really not nice to call him science guy, Ezra.
I saw that, too. I'd appreciate using my name in the future. Thank you.
Hi Simon,
Our constants are the types of seed, the type of water, the type of soil, the temperature, and what we do to the seed before hand. One question that I have is do you think that it is a good idea to use soybean seeds? How long do you think they will take to germinate? Do you think this is the right seed for our experiment?
Hi, team — My understanding is that it commonly takes a soybean seed about two days to germinate and sprout. The new plant doesn't emerge from the ground until about one week after planting. This sounds reasonable, but I would check with your teacher to see how much time you have.
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 we have looked at say that too. Also, the dependent variable is how much it will grow, and if it will at all.
Sounds great, team! Yes, your dependent variable is how much the plant will grow, and your independent variable is the amount of water. Thirdly, you have constants, and you have listed the important ones well!
Our idenpendet variable is the amount of water. We will have a control experiment of the normal amount of water, and then 4 others. We have way too much, then just a little more than normal, then just a little less than normal, then way too less.
Off to a good start! What now will be your dependent variable?
Good morning, team! These are both interesting independent variables to test. My vote is for you to change the amount of water, since quantity is usually easier to manipulate than quality. Different amounts of water, or the same amount at different times, is more basic than different sources of water with possibly lots of different minerals varying among the sources.
If you end up going with amounts of water, I’m very curious how you think you’ll apply the water. And please let me know: What is your independent and dependent variable. You already have a good grasp of what those terms mean!
Hi simon. Today we learned about the differences of a independent variable and a dependent variable. An independent variable is usually the one that you are trying to change, and the dependent variable is the one that is changed as a result of that.
By the way, different types of water is like shower water, tap water, and filtered water. Some of the reasons that some of us don't want to do this are that this might not have a big enough effect for us to see, and it is too random.
Hi Simon,
The dependent variable in our question, "how does different amounts of water affect seed germination?" is how fast, healthy, and tall our plant grows. There is also some talk about doing different types of water instead of different amounts. What do you think? All things that I have researched about our question so far I already knew, but we want to find out the exact difference between all three plants. The one will not enough water, the one with a good amount, and the one with too much.
said
Hi Simon
We would like your opinion. Should we change the amounts of water for our experiment, or they type of water?
Like, we would do rainwater, shower water, and tap water, or the right amount of water, too much, and too little. We have a sort of disagreement, and would like your advice.
Hi Simon
We would like your opinion. Should we change the amounts of water for our experiment, or they type of water?
Today we made our questions to you officially into research topics. The one that I am researching for now is, Do the seeds not get all of the necessary air when they are under the soil? Do they ever suffer from lack of air? On this topic, I have already learned that it is actually possible. I have also learnd that the soil particles must be very small in order for this to happen. One question that I have for you today is, Do you know if they sell soil with verying particle sizes? And, about the welwitschia, do you know when it was first discovered?
Hi, Ezra — That's a very interesting topic. Seed suffocation! Great research to find out how that might happen! I'm wondering how you might tell if air is getting to seed or not. If you assume particle size affects this, then an experiment would just have to change that one variable. I'm not sure about buying soil by particle size; however, I know there are different particle sizes in soils. Perhaps you could sift out the big ones from the small ones with a screen? Vermiculite also may come in different sizes.
Welwitschia, as I was able to discover, was first described in 1863 by a botanist from Scotland. They were sent parts of the plant by a field botanist who found it a few years earlier. Of course, the local African people have known about the plant for ages, and even used it as shade for containers of water they wanted to keep cool. It's a really cool plant I guess ;-)
Today we got to research some of our questions and mine is how long can a seed survive in water until it can no longer germinate. From what I have got so far, I think that it really depends on the seed, but I don't have an estimation yet. Do you think that this is a good research topic? One other question that I have is how long does a seed take to germinate on average?
Hi, Wade — Your question is a neat one, because it asks what happens if a seed gets too much water, rather than not enough. These days rainfall is changing all over the world, and it would be interesting to see how this might effect germination. How would you set this experiment up, roughly?
As you might imagine, it takes different seeds different amounts of time to germinate even when the conditions are right. If the conditions aren't right, seeds can wait until they are, sometimes for years! For your experiment, your seeds should germinate within the timeframe of your project.
HI Simon,
Today in class we narrowed down our question and now we only have three. the question I was interested in was Would a seed germinate if it didn't access to every resource it needs? I was wondering if my question was a valid and useable question for our lab. one question I have is what are some good resources to exclude or include??
Hi, Ashna — Your question is a great start. I think that looking into special resources a plant needs (like minerals) could get at something different than looking into the usual conditions a seed needs (like light, water, temperature). Though, were you thinking water could be a recourse in this case?
I do think your question in a way asks: Would a seed germinate if it didn't have what it needed to germinate? And so I would think they answer is "no" if you thought about it that way. However, if you were thinking about seeing what resources help a seed germinate, maybe sooner or later, in different amounts, that sounds like it could be a cool experiment.
The thing about seeds is that they have most everything they need (food) to germinate, except maybe water. So maybe nothing would change germination, or maybe only make it harder. I'm not sure what minerals a seed might need myself, and that would be worth researching further or or experimenting with yourselves!
Hello, Pinta Bintas!
Sounds like you have been learning lots about seeds and how they germinate. It's a very helpful foundation to learn about what scientists have discovered before you create an experiment of your own.
If you were hoping to get answers to your questions out of me, I'm afraid I have been stumped by you all. But I'm not worried, as I'm sure one of these questions would make an elegant experiment for your team to run!
I enjoy hearing from you. Keep up the good work!
Hi Simon,
Today in class we learned about the factors of seed germination and how they affect the seed. I find it fascinating how little changes can effect the plant in big ways. For example A temperature change can really effect a plant even if it’s by a few degrees. I wonder would a seed germinate if the needed resources weren’t available.
Sincerely,
Ashna
Hi. One thing that I learned today is that certain seeds must be removed from the fruit to begin germination. The question that I have is, When the seeds are buried in the soil, do the sometimes not get enough air to germinate?
One thing that I learned today that affects seed germination is soil particle size. The smaller the soil particle is, the less light can get through, therefore making seed germination a harder process. One question that I have is how long can seeds "hold their breath," or be under water for until they can no longer germinate.