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Amelia,
Very interesting research question! You have a good start on an explanation. Why do you think a plant that is getting more light will have more pigment? What is that pigment doing for a plant?
When I think of plant color, I think of 2 main colors - the greens and purple. Are you focusing on one over the other?
Green color comes from chlorophyll (used by the plant to harvest sunlight to produce food), when the leaf has very low chlorophyll it can look yellow or white. Purple colors are antioxidants and used to protect the plant from stress. (Not to confuse the topic, but as you look around a garden, you may see plants with patterns on their leaves or purple/red colors that are always present - these may not change with changes to the environment.)
As to measuring color, that is a challenge. If we were in the lab - There are machines that can measure the amount of chlorophyll or other pigments. It is possible to get color values off of a digital picture. You can get the RBG (Red, Blue, Green) values of a specific area and do some math to compare the differences.
Realistically, I think you are asking how green is one plant compared to the others, how yellow " " and how purple "".
Quantitative data - I would create a color scale that you can use to rank how intense the colors are. You can even go to the hardware store and get a few of the strips of paint samples that go least intense to most intense. give the least intense a rank of 1 and the most intense a rank of e.g. 5. Use the same scale to make all your measurements (you will need a scale for each color). This is a want to have quantitative data.
Collecting qualitative data is also important for this experiment - descriptions of what the plant looks like/what you are seeing. Photographs are a good way to document this.
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Phoebe did a wonderful job guiding my students on how they could collect data for their question! I love that she refers to what they would if they were in a lab with more advanced equipment, but also gives them ideas of something they could practically do to collect data in our classroom. Great feedback!
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