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sphsbradleyfall2017 project 7

Project by group sphsbradleyfall2017

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Explore Work on this next!
What do we know about plants from our experiences outside of school? What have we discovered in class and background research? What questions about plants interest us?
Research Question What do we want to test or study? How did we come up with the question(s). How does the question fit what we know about the topic?
Predictions What are the possible outcomes of our study given the variables we are working with? What is our explanation for why and how we think this will happen?
Experimental Design What is our plan? Be sure to include enough detail that another group can replicate our experiment. What variables will we test? What variables will we measure and observe? What variables will we keep constant? How will we record our data?
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

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
has been updated by administrator
Julia Chapman
uploaded fertilization_Householdwastewater.pdf in project files
    Julia Chapman
    said

    Here's a brief pamphlet from the University of California about using household gray water (water from laundry or dish-washing) for watering plants. Might be useful for understanding your results!

Alexis
said

I had to reject my hypothesis because I believed that the plant with the most amount of laundry detergent would grow the most because I knew the phosphates can lead to algal blooms in dish detergent. 

    Julia Chapman
    said

    You had good logic in forming your hypothesis. Excess phosphorus is one contributing factor for algal blooms, so it is logical to think that laundry detergent, which contains phosphates, would be beneficial for plant growth. Have you done any research on other ingredients commonly found in laundry detergent? I have a suspicion that there are other compounds in it that may be harmful to plants. You could check the label of the detergent you used to see what is in it and try searching for information about environmental impacts for the other ingredients.

Alexis
said

so we concluded that the plants that were watered with plain water grew the most and the one that were watered with a light amount of detergent diluted in the water grew the second most and so on 

    Julia Chapman
    said

    Interesting. It seems like your data support your initial hypothesis: "If sulfates and phosphates harm plants we will see less photosynthesis in the grass seeds."

    Do you have any ideas about why the detergent is hindering the growth of your plants? Is there a particular step of photosynthesis that the sulfates and phosphates might be interfering with? Or could the sulfates and phosphates be hurting the plant's ability to acquire something needed for photosynthesis?

Megan
said

The aspirin, lime juice, and epsom salt were for a different group. I did not mean to upload those pictures.

Megan
uploaded 9161A364-2F66-4FC6-96C1-D1D26020D862.JPG and 2 more files in project files
    Julia Chapman
    said

    Thanks for sharing your photos! This is interesting - it looks like the seeds in the control treatment are sprouting best. Can you tell me how many plants are growing in each treatment? It's difficult to count from the photos.

ConnorB
said

scratch the last two things we have five sprouts and a seed that opened up but hasn't sprouted yet one sprout in all but one light cup and both control cups (the one that hasn't sprouted yet is in one of the control cups)

    Julia Chapman
    said

    Let me make sure I understand:

    Control: Cup 1 has 0 sprouts (1 seed is open but not yet sprouted), Cup 2 has 0 sprouts

    Light: Cup 1 has 1 sprout, Cup 2 has 0 sprouts

    Medium: Cup 1 has 1 sprout, Cup 2 has 1 sprout

    Heavy: Cup 1 has 1 sprout, Cup 2 has 1 sprout

    Is that right?

Megan
said

I made an observation today that out of the 5 seeds that have sprouted they were all in the cups that we added laundry detergent to.

    Julia Chapman
    said

    Interesting...I wonder if there's something about the detergent that makes it easier for seeds to germinate? Have you done any searches for information about why sulphates and/or phosphates might be important for plants?

Julia Chapman
said

Hey Team! Great photos of your experiments! One of my favorite things to do when I'm out in a forest collecting data is to take photos of my work. Sometimes it's nice to be able to show what you're doing in a photo - beats trying to describe it in words!

Just to make sure I understand your photos correctly: The ones with popsicle sticks in them labeled C, L, M, and H are the ones where you've added laundry detergent as your treatment? Can you be more specific about how much detergent was added to the low, medium, and high treatments?

I also see cups in your photos labeled "Aspirin", "Epsom salt", and "Lime juice". Can you tell me more about this experiment?

Megan
uploaded 7F2C8B5A-1FAE-448D-84AA-DFE54ED95DA2.JPG and 6 more files in project files
ConnorB
said

I mean 2 sprouts in the heavy cups

ConnorB
said

So far we have a sprout in one of the heavy cups

Julia Chapman
said

Hey Team! I just wanted to check and let you know that I'll be taking over as your mentor for this project. Sometimes the original mentors we assign to you become busier than they expected and realize they can't help out like they wanted to. Totally understandable, right? We all get super busy sometimes!

That being said, I look forward to helping you with your experiments. So, if you have any questions, ask away!

Megan
said

For our experiment we were thinking about doing 8 cups of grass seeds and putting laundry detergent with sulfates and phosphates in 6 out of 8 of the cups with 2 cups having just a little and another 2 cups having a medium amount and the last 2 cups with a lot and 2 cups without any and putting them in a light source. The point for this lab that we came up with is to see if the laundry detergent harms or helps the plant growth. If we do this lab our hypothesis would be If sulfates and phosphates harm plants we will see less photosynthesis in the grass seeds. If there is anything that we could change please let us know.

    Julia Chapman
    said

    Hi Megan! Again, my apologies that your mentor Fawn has not had a chance to reply yet. As scientists, sometimes urgent things pop up that we must take care of right away, so she may just be very busy right now! I am going to check in with her and make sure she will still be available to mentor your team.

    In the meantime, I'm curious to know why you chose laundry detergent as your treatment. Can you tell me more about why you think it will affect plant growth? Why might sulphates and phosphates be harmful?

Megan
said

Today we did an experiment with leaf chads and we put them in cups of water with carbon dioxide in it and we put one cup in the dark and put one in the light and checked to see how many were floating every minute for 20 minutes but we only had 2 float in the cup under the light. I don't know if we did something wrong or we didn't have enough carbon dioxide.

Julia Chapman
said

Hey Team! I'm sorry your mentor Fawn hasn't had a chance to respond to you yet. My name is Julia and I'm a liaison, which means I help make sure that the communication between your teacher and mentors goes well and I keep an eye out for any issues. I hope you don't mind if I step in for a minute.

Welcome to PlantingScience! I know you've been working on some initial leaf disk experiments this week, and Fawn and I would love to hear what you've been doing. Did you have any interesting or surprising results?

 

Megan
said

I just wanted to let you know that we have a half day tomorrow and no school on Friday. We will not have class until Monday.

Alexis
said

Hey, I just wanted to tell you that we have done the radish lab.

Julia Chapman
joined the project
ConnorB
said

Hi, I am Connor and I just did the pre-test. i like soccer.

Alexis
said

Hi, my name is Alexis. I just finished the pretest and I do not expect to any labs until next week. I am very unsure about science but I hope this helps.

Megan
said

Hey I'm Megan. I go to south point high school and I'm on the dance team. I competitively dance outside of school also. We took the pretest today and I just wanted to say hey and that I'm part of the team. 

Megan
joined the project
ConnorB
joined the project
Alexis
joined the project

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