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vcsgeorgespring2020 project 1

Project by group vcsgeorgespring2020


Info

Explore Plants are all unique in their own ways, but are mostly known to all be able to produce their own food called glucose. Based on a reliable (.org) source I found: “The principal environmental requirements for plant growth include adequate space for root and canopy development, sufficient light,...
Research Question Does a hydroponics system with brown rice-based starch added to the water increase the growing speed of cherry tomato plants faster than a hydroponics system without added starch water from the rice?
Predictions If brown rice-based starch water is added to one hydroponics system and not added to an identical one, then the system with the brown rice starch-based water will contain plants that grow at a more rapid pace.
Experimental Design Boil water with brown rice for five minutes (ratio: 1 cup water to 1 cup rice) Cool water and pour into the soil of the plant Poor control water into an identical plant at the same time Place control cherry tomatoes in the same environment Measure the amount of water per plant equally each...
Conclusion What claim can we make from our experiment? What are possible explanations for our results? How do the data we collected and our reasoning with scientific ideas support our claim? What future experiments could be done to expand on the results of this experiment?
About this Project

This team showed resilience in face of an extraordinary scenario. Despite the global pandemic having affected their capacity to perform their planned experiment, they remained engaged with the project and looked for lessons in previous experiments that were aimed at testing their hypothesis,...

Updates

Get to know your team’s scientist mentor, who will encourage and guide you through the scientific process of discovery. The more you share your ideas and research info, the more your mentor can help. You may also hear from a scientist mentor liaison who will be helping all the teams in your class.
PlantingScience Staff
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PlantingScience Staff
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PlantingScience Staff
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PlantingScience Staff
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PlantingScience Staff
has been updated by administrator
PlantingScience Staff
has been updated by administrator
Chessa
said

I'm bummed the pandemic stopped the project, I was really looking forward to the experiment. Thanks for all your support! :)

Daphne
said

Marina,

Prom is said to be July 21st, I know its crazy! Well I wish you the best in Vienna, I wish I could travel to places like that, hopefully, someday when I am older. The weather in Idaho is bi-polar! I would love to bike too, but all my tires are popped and I never have the time to fix them. What brings you to Vienna, do you live there?

Happy Monday!

    Marina Borges Osorio
    said

    Dear Daphne,

    What brought me to Vienna was work. I am on my first science research job after my PhD in Botany. It seems like a great place to live and to visit indeed, although so far most of my time here has been in quarantine mode. So I'm looking forward to being able to explore more in the future. The weather is quite nice now too, luckily spring here isn't bipolar as over there. 

    Well, I hope you can find some time to get your bike tyres fixed somehow, and that the prom issue will be sorted in a suitable way. I also hope you can continue to be excited and intrigued about science in the future and can get a chance to do some real-life experiments, and of course, visit many cool places. I suppose that's a plus of being a scientist, we often have that chance!

    All the best, and take care!

    Marina

PlantingScience Staff
said

Farewell and Best Wishes!

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 https://plantingscience.org/projects/browse”>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

Daphne
said

Marina, 

I am going on walks and enjoying the sun on my skin, I love nature! Turns out prom is still on if you can believe that, but I don't know if I will be attending. This really is a unique time, I think, to better your relationship with the people you are, for a lack of a better word, stuck with. I'm just being lazy and having fun with the lack of schedule, although it can be boring.

Thank you for all your help and support!!!

    Marina Borges Osorio
    said

    Hi Daphne,

    Great you're going for walks and enjoying the sun, keeps your energy and vitamins high which is vital for times like these. I go out for jogs, walks or bike rides on a daily basis too here in Vienna. Plus, spring is especially a beautiful time to appreciate nature!

    Oh wow, when is your prom supposed to happen? It sounds like some things in the US are still not quite cancelled, but maybe they're just waiting to see how things progress...

    It was my pleasure helping you guys out, and I apologize if this season didn't allow you guys to actually test your experiment, but I hope it gave you a grasp of what plant scientists have to consider when doing research...

    All the best,

    Marina

    McKena
    said

    Yeah, I don't think I'm going to that. I would if it was during the school ear and not in, what June. But when its after the school year, I'll be busy getting a job, getting things ready for college. I might not have the time to go. 

    Going outside is fun to do during this time. There no people to bother you. hahaha! I hope we are able to see each other one last time in person though. 

Jessica Septon
said

Hi Team,

Great work on your project progress.  Sorry to hear the project did not turn out as hoped due to the pandemic problems.  Great work on researching what others have done.  Often times that is the best way to learn about experiments and how to make them better.  It also teaches you how others set up their experiments, write up data and conclusions, and work thru different problems.  

Sorry it took very long to get back, I was not getting the notification updates :(  I really appreciate all your hard work you all have done.  Very awesome!!

I hope everyone is well and safe and making good use of your extra time.  

Have a great day and stay safe!

Jessica

    Marina Borges Osorio
    said

    Dear Jessica,

    I'm sorry to hear you haven't been receiving notifications lately. I have no idea what might've happened! It was a pleasure working with you during these crazy times, hopefully things will be back on track for the next term of PS!

    Take care!

Daphne
said

Dear Mentor,

How can we complete this project if we do not have a hydroponics system within reach, or the means of doing this experiment together?

Good evening!

    Marina Borges Osorio
    said

    Dear Daphne,

    I think the message below was automated. Of course, we're running an extraordinary PS season, so you are unable to actually complete the project. But I think you guys did a great job in looking for other accomplished experiments that would help you anticipate your results. And yes, it looks like the work from Dr Teh indicates that you would likely get your hypothesis confirmed in your own trials. 

    Chessa, since you've mentioned the NPK treatment, would you know what does it stand for? NPK fertilizers are widely used in agriculture, and there's a special reason for that...wondering if it's clear for you why? Also, would you be able to reason why was this treatment introduced in their experiment? 

    On a different note, how are you guys coping with the shutdown? How do you find ways to stay motivated during these unprecedented times? 

    Stay healthy and safe!

    Marina

PlantingScience Staff
said

Hello team,

Thank you so much for continuing your PlantingScience work during the pandemic. You've all done some amazing work! We have made it to the final week of our session so it is time to start wrapping up your projects. Please share your final reports or conclusions with your mentor this week. They are excited to see how your experiments turned out! Don't forget to thank your mentors as well for their help!

Stay healthy and thank you again,

The PlantingScience Team

Daphne
said

Dear Mentors, 

Only difference in their plan as opposed to ours, besides the addition of a third experiment using fertilizer, we plan to use brown rice. This is because it has not been bleached and as processed as white rice, taking away more nutrients, so we are hoping for even better results. 

Thank you,

              Daphne

Chessa
said

Sorry if that posted twice or anything else strange. This website does not seem to like my home computer very much. 

Chessa
said

Hi! 

Our group did a bit of searching, and eventually found other people who were also interested in the benefits of using rice water on plants. One thing that stuck out to us was an article written by Dr. Christopher Teh with University Putra Malaysia on an experiment done that looked similar to what our experiment would have ended up looking like. They did something we thought was smart however, and did not have just a rice water and no rice water batch of the plant they used. They used Water Spinach, and had three groups. One was watered with average tap water, one was watered with the rice water, and the third one was treated with a “NPK 15:15:15 Fertilzer”. The end results showed that “using water from washed rice is as effective as NPK fertilizer in promoting plant growth, at least in terms of the number of plant leaves produced and the higher plant biomass (fresh)” (Teh). 

This article also looks at the specific nutrients that are contained in rice, and how much of the nutrients are gained in the water used after the rice has been washed/cooked. This has further strengthened the group's belief that we could replicate this experiment, and have positive results from the rice watered group of plants. 

Here is the article:

http://www.christopherteh.com/blog/2017/11/washed-rice-water/

Here is some information on Dr. Teh and some more of his research: 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christopher_Teh

Daphne
said

Dear Marina, 

Thank you, we believe further research is a great idea. We have just finished a virtual meeting and are now all looking for scholarly articles of past conducts of this experiment. Hope we find what we need!

Have a great morning!

Daphne
said

Dear Mentors,

It turns out we don't exactly have access to a Hydroponics system any longer, unless we go back to school with enough time to grow our cherry tomato plant. Plus, we can't get together as a group to do this project as one. What should we do maybe instead, or should we continue adding research and perfecting this idea then find an already grown cherry tomato plant and do the experiment as soon as we are back at school (we still don't know when that will be)?

Thank you,

          Daphne

    Marina Borges Osorio
    said

    Dear Daphne,

    Please see my message below. I think you guys could do some more research on the literature about your hypothesis, as I mentioned earlier. No need to worry about your plants at school now. :) 

    Usually, before starting up a project, scientists need to look for as much information as we can on what has already been done so far that's related to the topic we're studying, to ensure our proposed hypothesis is based on scientific evidence. From previous tests and experiments, we can actually try to infer what we would expect to happen in our future experiment (our hypothesis) as well as try to infer what works and what doesn't (in terms of experimental setups and analyses). 

    How about you guys do some virtual chat, or an online meeting (via Zoom perhaps? but any app you prefer to use is fine!) to try and split up the group and each individual can look for more information on some particular aspect of your project and write a paragraph, or a page?

    How does that sound? I understand you guys must've been so excited to start your actual experiments, and guess what? So was I! I'm actually on the same boat as you, and I think most scientists are too at the moment...we're unable to start up new experiments, and have to work on literature search and project writing instead. But good project planning is actually an essential part of scientific research! 

    Have a great day! :)

Daphne
said

Greetings mentors!

We are all stuck at home in what everyone is calling self-quarantine and aren't supposed to leave due to a recent bill that was passed in Idaho, unless in need of the essentials of course. Who knows when we will get to go back to school, but for sure the month of April is online teaching. We haven't yet communicated as a group, because the last week and this week became our spring break, but we will all be on online school starting Monday. I will look into the Info Section, thank you for all your help. :)

Hope you are safe and healthy as well!

    Marina Borges Osorio
    said

    Dear Daphne,

    Happy to hear from you! Yes, it is a pretty unusual situation that we are all going through. It's probably not so nice having a spring break in such conditions, but hopefully, you guys could at least have a good rest and remained healthy.

    Clearly we're all having to adapt with massive amounts of online content, so glad to see you guys are keen to continue doing your preliminary research and communicating with us during this quarantine season. 

    I think your team's idea is quite interesting and unusual too. Could you guys perhaps try to find out from the scientific literature additional past examples of these kinds of experiments using rice wastewater before? You've got me curious! Also, it could be good to put some more thought in your materials required and methods... :)

    Cheers,

    Your liaison

Daphne
updated the project info
Daphne
updated the project info
Daphne
updated the project info
Marina Borges Osorio
said

Hi everyone,

I'd like to encourage you, while you're home, to start filling up your project details on the Info Section above. This will help you have clear planning of what are your project expectations and research methods once you're back to school! And please, ask mentors as many questions as you wish! :)

Stay safe and healthy!

Chessa
said

Our group, after looking around more at some of the different variables that go into growing a plant, was wondering if instead of focusing on the dirt and soil aspects of planting, we could focus on the water aspect of a hydroponics system and how focusing more on the water being taken into the hydroponics system can affect the yield of a plant. We stumbled across some things on certain rices containing amounts of energy that can be trapped in the water used to cook the rice. We were curious to see if mixing some brown-rice water into the system water would affect the growing speed of cherry tomatoes in our hydroponics system due to the energy within some of the starch in brown rice. Next week we plan to set up two separate systems to test this. 

    Jessica Septon
    said

    Hi all,

    That sounds like a very interesting experiment with the rice.  Excellent idea!  I can't wait to hear how the experiment will be set up and the results from it.  Great job all!!

    Also, it is very important to be cautious and not rush as in doing so one can definitely make mistakes and/or miss important steps.  That is something important I am glad you all got to learn!

    Have a great day,

    Jessica

    Marina Borges Osorio
    said

    This is very interesting, Chessa! I agree with Jessica that this could be a very cool experiment. My advice for the time that you guys are home is to fill up your project sections above (Explore, research questions, etc). This way Jessica can give you more feedback and you'll have a well planned project when you're back at school!

Chessa
said

Hi! Something our group has been brainstorming as a topic to look into is, "What kind of variables would we want to focus on manipulating, when dealing with the growth of a food-baring plant in an Aquaponics system?" For example, what could we supply or change in the plant's growth process, specifically, to help our plant yield a larger amount of food? 

    Marina Borges Osorio
    said

    Hi Chessa, that's very interesting. Perhaps you guys can do some research now on what are the basic requirements for plant growth?

    Cheers,

    Jessica Septon
    said

    Hi Chessa,

    Good brainstorming!  What have you all learned in class about what plants need to grow?  How can you use what you have learned to set up your project steps?

    Have a great day,

    Jessica

    Chessa
    said

    In our class, the importance of being cautious when following procedures and collecting data that could affect an environment and understanding any possible consequences of rushing that process is really focused on. I think a reminder from this, that rushing through data can have consequences, will be a good thing to remember when completing this project and can help to receive more reliable results. 

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