Hi Steph! I had a great time doing the plant project with you! I thought that it was really fun. I wish you could do more projects with us! The group that has you for their project next is lucky to have you as their mentor.  I hope you have a great summer and have fun with your dog! Bye!

You really helped us when our plants started turning brown. We had no clue what was happening. Our entire project would have failed if it weren't for you. You were a great mentor. Thank you!

Thanks, Steph! Thank you for helping us with our experiment and helping us with questions we had! Hope your summer is fun

Thanks, Steph! It was really great talking to you. Good luck with your dog this summer. BYE!!!

These graphs look awesome!

Congrats on running your experiment! Before I leave you, I just wanted to say how proud I am of your progress and execution through the experiment. I could tell that you were all maybe a little frustrated that your salt-treated plants weren't growing as you had hoped, but that's often how science works. Things not working or not going according to plan is just a part of science. So, it's very important for you all to walk away from this NOT feeling like your project failed. It didn't at all! You learned that plants are much more sensitive to salt than you originally thought and that under ideal conditions plants grow pretty quickly. The beauty of science is that you still learn something valuable even when your projects aren't working perfectly.

I had such a great time working with you all! Good luck finishing the rest of the school year!

We're going to be starting our conclusions for our experiment soon. I wanted to say thank you for helping us with our experiment! 

Today we are making graphs to try and make part of our conclusions

Hi! we are on vacation next week, just to let you know

   Hey steph!

I had a quick question about the plants that haven't grown yet. I was wondering if there was a way to get them to grow (their the plants with salt).

Hi Teams and Mentors! We are wrapping up observing plant growth Friday. Students will upload final data tables and this week's journal entries. We will be on Spring break next week; students will be creating graphs, analyzing their data and writing their lab conclusions the week of April 29th. Each group will be creating a lab poster to present their results.

If mentors have any suggestions for their group or would like them to find the mass of plants, check pots to see if they can tell what happened to seeds that didn't sprout, or anything else, please give them a heads up before Friday!

Hi Team! Can you please share with Gianna what she missed last week and help her update her journal? It needs to be uploaded still. She's missing the week of 4/1 - that should be filled in, but wasn't uploaded.

Hi Team Cactus Rose!

My name is Jaime and I am the liaison for the Buzzell group! I see that you are making great progress and staying on top of your journals! Great job! However, I would like to remind to avoid including your last names in the documents you upload. 

Happy investigating and experimenting!

Jaime

I can see your concern with the other plants not growing. You were right in predicting that the plants exposed to more salt would not grow as well as the plants that grew without added salt. But I wouldn't assume that the salt is causing these plants to not grow yet.

Red and blue corn has a tendency to not germinate as well as the normal yellowish corn. If I were you, I would dig down a little bit into the cup to find the kernel and take a look. If it looks pretty much the same as when you planted it, the seed just didn't germinate. However, if it does look like something tried to emerge from the kernel (like the root radical or the hypocotyl) and it almost looks like it shriveled up and died, then it's likely from there being too much salt.

Check it out and let me know what you find!

Hmm interesting. 

Before we dive in much further, perhaps you can clarify 2 things for me. What do you mean by "red" and "blue" seeds? 

Second, how did you determine how much salt to add to each pot at the beginning of your experiment (why 14.1 and 28.3 g)?

Hi Steph

Today was the day of watering our plants. 

We also measured our plants! I thought it would be a good idea to tell you how tall they are now. So pot #1 which is the blue seeds also the one that has the rotting leaf has grown too 25 cm and the other plant which is growing in the same pot as that one has grown too 14 cm.

In the other pot that has plants one has grown to 18 cm and the other plant has grown to 6.5 cm.

I'm worried about the other plants that have not grown yet. I think they might have rottened or died or the salt is doing something to the seeds. Any ideas what might have happened to them?

Hi Steph!

We have a quick question on our corn plants for when they get bigger.

We where wondering if we should prop them up with something so they don't hurt their stem by leaning too much and what should we prop them up with? 

Thanks! hope your doing well- Hazel

Hi Steph! I just wanted to let you know that I won't be here tomorrow (Friday) or the entire next week.

Hi Steph! Our group has noticed that one of our plants (with no salt that we water every Friday) is now starting to turn brown at the tip and has some red-ish brow liquid coming out of it. It is still growing though. Do you have any advise for this or anything that we should do with it? 

Hello Steph! Last Friday one of our plants grew 1 centimeter tall, but today it's 4 1/2 centimeters tall! There is also another plant that grew too. That one is 3 inches tall.  We planted our plants on Monday the 25th. That was 8 days ago.

Hey Steph!

I hope your doing well, We haven't really kept up with what's going on well enough sorry about that. We did plant the corn plants around 4 days ago! We have 3 pots who each have 2 red seeds in them and 3 pots who each 2 blue seeds in them! We wanted to see if the salt affected seeds on color too! We're also water our plants on fridays. 

So far right now we've had one visible plant growing which is the blue seed with no salt in it which is really cool. Mac named it Jeffery for some reason, but so far no more have grown. Before "Jeffery" grew the soil in the pots with salt in them have been turning sorta crystally we think its from the salt. 

Hope your having a good day or night! - Hazel 

Good afternoon!

Just a quick reminder to please download your data table as a .pdf and then upload it to your files (on left sidebar). If you don't remember how to do this, the directions are in the student guide under the Student tab on the PS website.

For students who are not seeing any plant growth that want to change the experimental design, rather than just letting your mentor know you think you need to change the design, explain why and also suggest what changes you think would help your project get started. Mentors can answer questions and give assistance as needed, but ultimately, it is your project. If you know why something isn't working, decide what else you can try, write it down/revise your design and make the changes. 

Keep up the good work! 

Yeah, we are going to pay attention to coloring as well . . .  

We (I think?) are going to plant today. 

Hey, team!

I like the details you added to the experimental design section describing your project. It's great to see that you plan to compare plant heights for each of your investigation, but you may want to take some time to think of some other specific variables you will want to examine. 

My recommendation is to keep track of leaf appearance/color as well. I encourage you to do some googling on "leaf symptoms of salt stress" to get an idea of what kinds of visual cues you can keep an eye out for. Of course, I can help you out if you need it.

I'm not entirely sure what stage you're at in your experiment now, but did you keep any notes on germination? Did you see any trends with the amount of salt in your soil and germination success?

How often do you think we should water our corn plants?

is it ok if we start planting?

Hi Mentors and Students,

Students should have an experimental design posted that includes a complete material list, and detailed, step by step instructions for how to set up the experiment (no first person). The design should also lay out how data will be collected. For example - students may record qualitative data (color of leaves, general appearance/health of the plant) and quantitative data (how many seeds have sprouted, how tall the plants are, how many leaves...)

Mentors,

I was hoping most groups would be setting up today, but some groups are in need of feedback. Students have been instructed to look up things like planting instructions and how much water to give - they can share their findings and ask for clarification, but should have this information already. 

One thing that I have noticed is that some students have changed more than one variable - so it will be hard to tell which one had an effect on growth and germination.

Students all have access to 4" pots, potting soil (4 large bags of Miracle Gro potting soil) and I have salt, vinegar, baking soda, pH testers, hot plates, a lighter, grow lights, microscopes, dissection tools, beakers, scales, etc... available. If students want to use different soils or sand, or need tin foil or other items, they will need to bring these items in from home.

Tomorrow should bring some photos of experiments that have been set up!

That does sound like an interesting question, and well worth exploring. I study corn, so I'm pretty happy that you get to study corn, too!

When designing an experiment, a good starting point is to think about the problems you are interested in solving or the knowledge gaps you are interested in filling. You've done a really good job with addressing a question that dozens of scientists are also interested in - how to possibly use salt water for sustainable agriculture.

Now the next step is generating a hypothesis. Your hypothesis is a prediction of what may happen in the experiment, and that prediction is made based on information you've already learned. If you're lucky, your experiment will allow you "accept" your hypothesis (the experiment supports your hypothesis) or "reject" your hypothesis (the experiment does not support your hypothesis). 

So, using what you've learned in your science classes about biology, what do you expect will happen?

When we say, "soil salinity", we mean we want to add the salt to the plants via through the water.

We thought that our research question could be, How does soil salinity impact seed germination. We chose this because, there is alot more salt water in our world, so if plants could grow with just salt water or even distilled water then it would save alot of the fresh water for humans and animals. The seeds we would like to do are corn seeds.