A quick call last night to our science researcher friend got us the data we were curious about! We only have data for four weeks, and were wondering what happened over a longer period of time. Good thing we've got a connection to someone who takes such copious information down for students!
Here's what the data told us:
Here's what the data told us:
We were really interested by what happened in environment #3 and #4. Not that #1 (light, air and sun) or #2 (air and sun) didn't interest us, too, but #3 and #4 were more heavily discussed for certain! Environments #1 and #2 showed us that plants don't need soil but that they certainly need water.
Environment #3 was surprising because some of us thought that even with a little air in the jar (we knew it wasn't completely without air), we honestly thought it would have grown. But over the 12 weeks, there was no change in weight, proving no growth. Plants certainly need air!
Environment #4 was the MOST surprising! We originally thought that plants didn't need light to grow, as there was a little growth from Week 0 to Week 4, but after Week 8 we saw growth go stagnant and then begin to go down. This let us figure out that plants do indeed need light to grow. Without it, they seem to do a little growth, and then none at all, and then they lose weight.
We decided we will run similar experiments in our class to gather a greater sample size to our science researcher friend's experiment. We've got about 10 weeks of school left, so we'll see what we find!
Environment #3 was surprising because some of us thought that even with a little air in the jar (we knew it wasn't completely without air), we honestly thought it would have grown. But over the 12 weeks, there was no change in weight, proving no growth. Plants certainly need air!
Environment #4 was the MOST surprising! We originally thought that plants didn't need light to grow, as there was a little growth from Week 0 to Week 4, but after Week 8 we saw growth go stagnant and then begin to go down. This let us figure out that plants do indeed need light to grow. Without it, they seem to do a little growth, and then none at all, and then they lose weight.
We decided we will run similar experiments in our class to gather a greater sample size to our science researcher friend's experiment. We've got about 10 weeks of school left, so we'll see what we find!
So with all that discussion...we circled back to all that we've figured out so far:
For every example we've come across so far, the same thing happens. One thing in a relationship gets bigger (the weight of a fly's eggs, the larvae that consume the badger, the soil the worms poop out after eating the dead plants, the mold that decomposes the strawberry). We've even proven for some of these examples that these things have weight.
But do plants really get the matter they need to grow from the three things we found out from our experiments? Are air, light, and water matter? Plants absolutely need these things, but are they what gives the plants the matter to grow (and ultimately gain weight)?
IF THEY ARE...shouldn't we be able to weigh them like we could weigh anything that was being consumed in any of our other examples?
So yup. That's what we will do!
But do plants really get the matter they need to grow from the three things we found out from our experiments? Are air, light, and water matter? Plants absolutely need these things, but are they what gives the plants the matter to grow (and ultimately gain weight)?
IF THEY ARE...shouldn't we be able to weigh them like we could weigh anything that was being consumed in any of our other examples?
So yup. That's what we will do!
RSS Feed