Info
| Explore | We all understand the process of photosynthesis and how detrimental it is for plants to have a substantial income of light. It has been taught to us since elementary school that plants need sun, or a certain lightsource to thrive. That is exactly the reason we came upon the question for our... |
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| Research Question | In the most general possible way, we were taught that plants were not eligible to grow in the dark. Well, our group decided to see the results of plants germinating in the dark. Through background research many articles were stating plants would have to be fully grown with some sense of sunlight.... |
| Predictions | It's predicted that plants with more sunlight will grow taller and faster than those with less or without. It's also predicted by the group that dicots will grow more and faster than monocots due to the facts that Dicots run off of two cotyledons, and monocots off of endosperm. Quantitatively,... |
| Experimental Design | 36 one gallon ziplock bags 6 pieces of standard 8’ 5’ cut graph paper 60 pearl millet seeds 60 rye seeds 60 soybean seeds Non ionized water Ruler A marker to label bags. LED red and blue spectrum Grow-light Three new cardboard boxes from Costco Cloth/t-shirt String Light Timer 36... |
| Conclusion | During the whole 14 days it seems as if the dark ones have grown better progress ethan the light and mid plantings. Through evidence the dark has germinated at 90% through the series of plants. The mid, only 85% of seeds has germinated. The light to summarize this germination occurrence only 50%... |
| About this Project |
Updates
Thank you so much for your time committing to this Project, You did a wonderful job helping and contributing to this project! Thanks again for your wonderful work.
Thank you! You really worked hard. I am very impressed by how you planned, performed, and reported your experiments. Best wishes to all of you. -- Dr. Hay
Thank you so much for helping us out with our team project, your comments were a lot of help to us!
Go Team Starchild! Excellent work PlantingScientists! I really enjoyed working with you. You really worked hard!
Nice report. Scientific writing is challenging. There are a lot or rules for content and format. Did you upload a preliminary draft here? Or is this pdf a final version?
It is the final. Do we have your approval?
I enjoyed reading your report of scientific data. Very nice job! My only suggestion is to work on the abstract some more. Abstracts are one of the most important sections of a report. They need to get the attention of the reader and summarize all parts of the paper.
Nice poster! Did you deliver your poster presentation to an audience?
We're finished!! Going to upload the document now with all of our information
Jordan, does anybody ever call you J-Hay.
How is everyone doing?
Good, we're all working on a poster presentation of the data and project, we'll send pics.
But we're all wondering about that nickname now.
Hello Everyone. This is Dr. Hay. It is good to hear about your poster preparation! How exciting! A good poster will tell a nice story and be useful as a visual aid for the presenter.
Are you giving me the nickname J-Hay?
yes.
We did, haha! I saw it and then saw the plants and was interested in it so I looked it up. It's so neat to see famous botanists being featured in things :)
Hi Everyone! Did you see the Plant Biology on the front page of Google? Check it out here.
What is the difference between rye dark day 1 and rye dark day 2? Are those separate experiments?
We started the experiments a day earlier with Day One seeds and the Day Two seeds were started the day after.
we can make a graph real quick
This is the follow-up graphs to our experiment regarding the weights of the dark plants versus light when they were dried out (to see if plants that started photosynthesis would weigh more with matter they produced)
Results were inconclusive, most likely due to the short length of our experiment. We predict that if the photosynthesizing plants had been given more time to grow, they would have weighed more.
I only saw a table of the dry weights. Did you have a graph? Are those average values in the table? If so, what is the sample size?
Thanks for sharing the dry weight data. Were you able to draw any conclusions? Did you see any differences between the environmental conditions?
Dr. Hay were you not able to view the PDF file that I recently shared?
My main suggestion for "SecondGraphingforstarchild.pdf" would be to show different light conditions in the same graph. That way we could see the differences.
Yes the link of the google docs are the same as the PDF file. I just had to download it as a different version for you to see.
I wasn't able to view the google document. I wonder if you can post in on our project page.
I like how you captured the growth dynamics. Nice work!
The uploaded PDF file are all the graphs of the total plants. The data is based on the averages of the hypocotyl and radicle.
Hello Team Starchild! This is Dr. Hay. I was looking at your data in the PDF file, trying to visualize it in the form of a graph (see the post below). What are your thoughts? It has been nice working with you. I am very impressed with your project info page! Great work PlantingScientists!
We are in the midst of summarizing our data and hopefully we'll be able to post some graphs and data by Monday.
OK. That sounds like a plan!
Did you think about summarizing your data at all? You have so many measurements.
Scientists distinguish between raw data and summarized data. Summarized data is in the form of concise tables or graphs.
Parasitic plants grow and develop by taking the nutrition from other living organisms, they even have modified root in order to do so. Meanwhile, saprophytic plants convert already dead, or dying, substances in order to retain themselves and develop.
Plants are so interesting!
Hello botanists! Concerning plants growing in the dark, did you know that now all plants are green? There are some plants which are parasitic and some which are saprophytic. How do you think these types of plants grow?
Sorry, I meant to say that "not" all plants are green.
Did Destiny post a graph? I don't see it for some reason.
It's great to read the updated project description. One suggestion I have is to include/discuss the concept of "etiolation" or "etiolated growth".
Nice pictures. A few suggestions. Please include a title for each photo and a description. You could also include some labels on the photos (e.g. label the hypocotyl). Including a scale (ruler bars) would be great too.
Wow, this is a lot of data. You are taking a lot of measurements. That's great. Nice work! Do you have any ideas on how to summarize this raw data into a table or graph?
Thanks for the movies Vanessa! Your experiments are well organized!
Nice data Jaden! Any ideas why there is no growth for the hypocotyls? Also, note that for plant two, there are two columns for radicle. Another suggestion I have is to calculate some averages for your data. Also, can you think of some way to present your data in a figure/graph?
We're halfway through the experiment, and we've run into so unforeseen issues. For one, the amount of seed bags were a lot to measure, and we made a duplicate of one seed bag accidentally. Our dark box was on the floor, and it was moved or kicked on occasion when we not present, so that the bags would fall down by the next day. This is a problem in itself, but with soybeans, the effect was greater. They wouldn't stick well in the bags in their positions, and when knocked over, would roll out of place. We combated this by creating notches for the dowels to rest on, but for the dark box, this still didn't suffice. Only today did we move the box to a counter not near a heater or window that was suitable for the dark box to be
I'm sorry to hear that. One of the things you will be responsible for as a scientist is a discussion of experimental error when you interpret your results. As far as the data collection problem (i.e. having too much data), have you considered taking photographs of your plants and measuring them digitally?
monocots don't store their food in cotyledons, they store it in the endosperm.
You are correct. Monocots have a triploid (three sets of chromosomes) endosperm for food storage. You are thinking like a plant scientist. Good work!
Thanks for sharing the pictures. Nice setup up. I hope you make some good observations and great discoveries!
monocots don't store their food in cotyledons, they store it in the endosperm.
This is our experiment set up .
Thanks for sharing ExperimentStarchild. I just wanted to comment on "Dicots will germinate and grow more than Monocots because Dicots have double the amount of cotyledons that Monocots have, and therefore, more food storage in the absence of light to photosynthesize with." Remember, during seed germination and post-germinative growth, food stores in the seed are used to fuel growth through the mobilization of stored carbon such as starch. For example, the starch gets broken down into smaller sugars, which are then metabolized for energy and used as carbon skeletons for biosynthesis. This is why seeds can grow in the dark. In other words, sugars produced through phtosynthesis can be stored as starch, and that starch can be stored in the cotyledons (in the case of a dicot seed). Now, I want to ask you an important question. Do monocots store food in their cotyledons? If not, what is the food storage tissue of a monocot seed?
Side note: We change the corn to soybeans to determine the differences of dicot and monocot seeds as their growing through this experiment.
OK. Other than the number of cotyledons, can you tell the difference between the soybean seed and monocot seeds? Remember, a seed has 3 main components: embryo, coat, and food store.
We're checking the genetics and uniformity of the seed's we will be testing today, and on top of it, we've decided to use more types of seeds-rye, corn, AND pearl millet. I'm thinking we will collect data each of the four days if we can, and that our results will be measured in color, height and color as well the looks of their health?
All of the seeds you have chosen are monocots. There are two main types of seeds -- monocots and dicots. Do you know what is the difference between a monocot and a dicot? And why have you chosen all monocot seeds?
We originally wanted to compare the different monocots with their drought stress. Presumably, if a plant can handle more drought stress, it can handle more or less light. However, monocots versus dicots might be a better more measureable approach
Looking at different monocots is not a bad idea. Monocots can vary in the type of photosynthesis they have -- C3 versus C4 photosynthesis. C4 plants like corn are relatively more drought tolerant than C3 plants due to a combination of anatomical and biochemical specialization. Do you know that the "C" in C3 and C4 stands for?
Hello Seed Scientists! Very nice protocol. I have some questions about the data you will collect. What types of data will you be collecting? Quantitative measurements? Qualitative observations? And, how many times will you be collecting data over those 14 days?
Materials
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3 one gallon ziplock bags
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3 pieces of standard 8’ 5’ cut paper towel
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18 pearl millet seeds
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Non ionized water
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Ruler
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3 Labels
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Grow-light
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Three cardboard boxes from art teachers
Procedure
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Gather materials together.
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Set up the grow-light and the three boxes in a dark room. Cut the side of the first box off. (purple light is required to make the plant function, blue and red LEDS =purple lights)
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Cut the side of the second box off, and put a cheesecloth over the opening (?)
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Leave the third box alone.
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Put two tablespoons of non-ionized water into the bottom of a bag.
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Slide a sheet of the 8’5’ measured paper towel into the bag.
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Laying the bag flat, pierce six evenly spaced holes, using the ruler as reference. Place seeds at these points. They should be about 4 inches up, or in the middle, of the paper
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Repeat steps 1-3 for the remaining bags, seeds, and paper. Label each bag with either sun, half-sun, and dark.
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Put a bag in each of the dark/light environments, making sure to adjust the bag accordingly so that the seeds get the desired amount of light from the grow light.
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Gather data of the growth over the span of 14 days
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Put gloves on your hands or put germex on them before handling bags.
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3 tbsps water every other day.
Info for planting: https://www.nextnature.net/2012/02/growing-plants-in-the-dark/
This is a more detailed version of what we want our experiment to look like.
Gloves are a good idea! Scientists often wear gloves when doing tissue culture experiments that require sterile environments. Being careful when handling everything is also a good idea. Sounds like you are developing really good experimental plans!
For the boxes. I was thinking of buying boxes at costco which is relatively close to being sanitary. The general size would be half the size of a treasure chest on the terms of having imagery. Before we get to planting we are considering to wear gloves also, having germ X on before having contact with the bags.
Okay. We don't have much we can do to reduce those factors because we don't have an unaffected area that we could accomplish this. However, we can control how we handle the bags, and what boxes we put the seeds in. We plan to get as uniform boxes as we can from Costco, and to use a growlight in a dark room or cabinet
The bags sound like a good way of controlling the moisture level. Will you be able to keep the level of contamination down? Aseptic techniques could prevent contamination by microorganisms such as fungi.
An idea we plan to use that might eliminate the possibility of differing factors regarding the nutrients available might be to use sheets of paper flat in plastic bags, and, putting water in the bottom of the bag, and use the paper to wick up water for the plants. We can place these upright in boxes with a grow light in one, monitored to be turned off in the evening, a growlight in the other, obscured by patches or holes and also turned off in the evening, and one that has no growlight and no light at all.
Hello PlantingScientists and botany students! I am so glad we are all linked up now in this group. You are planning some great experiment. You asked for some advice. Do be careful in designing controlled experiments. If you are looking at the effects of light on plant growth then you want to keep nutrients in the soil controlled. Conversely, if you are looking at the effects of soil nutrition, then keep the light controlled. If you are doing a multivariate experiment (combinations of light and nutrients), then keep other factors such as temperature controlled. Well designed experiments have good positive and negative controls. Replication will be important too. If you have any questions or if I can help, please let me know. Great to meet all of you! Have fun!
we are planning on putting the plants in different places like different shades of dark to see if they will germinate .
Our team has been conferring on the ability of plants to germinate in varying degrees of light and dark. We were hoping to narrow things down to something achievable in our classroom, that is also measurable. We were thinking of using the pearl millet (poaceae) seed because it's a relatively hardy seed that we can plant several of in one pot, as well as using non-ionized water, recycled soil, and 20-30-20 fertilizer for each seed. Any advice?
Hello, my name is Jaden, nice to meet you! I enjoy gardening, and drawing and sleeping. Sleeping more than other things. Thank you for mentoring us! ^u^
Hello, this is Maggie. I'm a student at Service High. I play french horn, I like to pet cats, and I love plants! Thank you so much for volunteering to mentor us!
Hi im Vanessa, i am a botany student at Service High School