Planting Science - Projects: Team Starchild
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Team Starchild

Project by group shsmacleanfall2016project

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 project. We understand that plants need light, however, how much light can they survive on? The question of the durability of various monocots and dicots is a topic we find truly interesting.
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. Through our data analysis is seems to us from our view that the plants that grew in total darkness seemed to have a huge improvement than the ones with half light, or full light. The big huge question that interested us as a whole is stated. Is it possible plant could grow in total darkness? We are out mostly amazed with some partial lies based on some background research, so we tested this inference ourselves. And it is to our amazement that our inference of plants growing in complete darkness seem to improve in height, but certainly not in color. -Destiny Ropati
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, the dicots hold more energy storage for before photosynthesis.
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 iron rods Procedure: Gather materials together. Set up the grow-light 4 inches above the top of two boxes and set the third one in a darker spot.. Cut the top of the first box off. (purple light is required to make the plant function, blue and red LEDS =purple lights) Cut the top of the second box off, and put a cheesecloth over the opening, or any fabricated material to block out some of the light Leave the third box alone. The top closed will keep the plants dark. In each box, cut six divots per two inches on opposite sides. These will be to keep the dowels holding seed bags secure. Next, gather the gallon sized ziplock bags and pierce 4 holes. 2 on either side on the front of the bag about inch away from each other vertically. After punching the holes, get an iron rod and line it up with the 4 holes, then string the rod onto the bag, creating a way for the bag to be hung within the boxes. Put 15 mL of non-ionized water into the bottom of a bag. Mark ten evenly spaced dots with your pencil on an 8’ by 5’ piece of graph paper, 4 inches up from the bottom of the paper. Slide a sheet of the 8’5’ measured graph paper into the bag. Laying the bag flat, place seeds on the marked points from step 9. Position as precisely and gently as possible. Repeat steps 1-3 for the remaining bags, seeds, and paper. Label each bag with either sun, half-sun, or dark, the seed type, and the number one or two to distinguish duplicates for measurement. Put 2 of each seed type bag in each of the dark/light environments, hanging them vertically across the top of the box with the metal bars. To keep them stable, you may tape to ends to the box. Close the top of the dark box and tape. Using the timer, set up the light for the half-light and full light boxes to turn on at 7 am, and turn off at 4:30. Lights are on for 9 ½ hours. Water with 15 ml water every other day. On weekends, put water into the corresponding other day for either day one or day two, and give 5 ml of water to the other test bags Gather data from each bag of the growth over the span of 14 days Info for planting based on actual info on how to plant in the dark //source//: https://www.nextnature.net/2012/02/growing-plants-in-the-dark/
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% if each category of plants has had the experience of germination. The plants that were exposed to no light grew longer than the plants exposed to any light at all. The monocots and dicot growth average for the plants exposed to no light was 48.26, while the half light average was 32.56. The average growth of monocots and dicots exposed to full light was 40.99. The plants that were not exposed to light grew 15.7 millimeters more on average, and the difference of growth between no light and half light plants was 7.27 millimeters. In conclusion, the plants that were exposed to no light whatsoever, were the ones who grew significantly larger than the other plants. However, it should be noted that there was a missing millet experiment, which was assigned to the half light procedures; but it was unfortunately misplaced and was not tested. Therefore, the Half light data could very well be equal with the full light data, or the half lights could have a larger data average than what was surveyed in the experiment. The reason the plants exposed to no light at all grew more than plants exposed to light was possibly due to rapid cell elongation(https://www.reference.com/science/plants-grow-faster-dark-a5cef99cfd57883e). This process allows for the plants to stretch upward towards the light, but not actually giving them nutrients or minerals for growth because without the process of photosynthesis, plants can not grow. So instead of actual development, the plants simply stretched towards the sunlight. There were some unforeseen complications within the project that may have caused inconsistencies within the data. About halfway through the experiment, the box that contained the seed not exposed to light was kicked. Some of the seeds within the box fell off the notches within and the seeds fell within the bags. After reorganization, some seed growth may have been stunted, or the seed numbering may have been confused after the incident. Another problem within the experiment was the issue of measuring. For the rye and millet seeds, it was difficult to see where the root ended, because they were the same color as the grid paper we use, and borderline transparent. There was also minor difficulties in measuring the soybeans, due to the hypocotyl and radicle being one constant shoot. It was challenging to differentiate between the 2, which may have upset the data minorly. Also another issue with the project was that the millet developed a bizarre red stain around seeds 4, 5, and 6 on the day 1 seeds. This was seen as a development of mold, which caused those plants to not grow as much as the other plants, because it proved to be toxic to the seeds.The unaffected seeds grew around the stain, and fortunately, they continued to grow normally. In order to measure the plants’ weights in grams, we took multiple steps in order to ensure an accurate measurement. First, we put the plants on a scale, weighing them with their respective groupings. For example, the soybeans that were in the second bag that were exposed to full light were measured together and so on. After marking down their weights, the plants were placed in an incubator to be dried out. After drying out, the plants’ measurements were taken again and with that we can see how much of the plant’s weight was simply water weight. However, the side experiment went a tad off course. The millet and Rye proved to be too small to weigh accurately without their water weight. However, it showed that the Soybean average growth was similar with the water weight and without.
Investigation Theme WOS
Grade Level High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12)
School Name Service High School
Session Fall 2016

Team

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NSF_Logo.jpg This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant #2010556 and #1502892. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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