Story of the Seed Lab Report

9/22/16
Story of the Seed- Broccoli Bunch
Annika Gordon, Katie Inman, Whitley Moody, and Madeline Gong

The purpose of our project was to see if there were other ways to grow types of plants. We came to a major conclusion that plants can grow with different types of waters and lights. This is a significant process to be aware of so you can use other resources in order to grow plants. All the other sections summarize our procedures, what we used to grow the plants, our problems and results in the end. Each of the other sections summarize the background information, our materials, the project’s procedure, our data, results and the flaws in our project.

For the past two weeks, our team has been germinating and growing broccoli seeds. Our hope was to find what variables help the plants grow taller. We used two independent variables: color of light and type of water. We used red light, blue light, and natural light. Also, we used coconut water, salt water, and tap water. Our control group was the plant that had natural sunlight and natural water. We tracked the growth from seed to plant for ten days, and have now moved the broccoli plant to a larger garden where we will continue to monitor the growth of the plant.

Materials
90 ml tap water
90 ml salt water
90 ml coconut water
180 broccoli seeds
900 ml of dirt
180 cm by 180 cm square of red saran wrap
180 cm by 180 cm square of blue saran wrap
9 1300 ml cu
9 200 ml cups
Beaker to measure
9 rubber bands
1 paper clip
1 artificial light source
We didn’t have any special methods, we simply planted the broccoli seeds like normal, watered them and watched them grow.

Steps
1. Label all 9 8 ½ cm cup with the light color and liquid it will be watered with [ex: red light and coconut water is RC]
2. Place 90 mL of soil in each cup
3. Sprinkle 25 broccoli seed in each cup
4. Place 10 more mL of soil on top of the seeds in each cup
5. Water each cup with 30 mL of their designated liquid
6. Place a 20 cm by 20 cm piece of colored plastic sheet over designated cup
7. Secure each plastic sheet with a rubber band around the top of cup making sure it is airtight
8. Poke 10 holes in each plastic sheet on a cup with a paper clip
9. Place all cups together under artificial light
10. Repeat step 5 and 9 daily and make sure you only uncover the ones with a plastic sheets for a maximum of 10 minutes
Some things that we changed from our procedure [which did not help our experiment] were not putting a plastic sheet of clear on the natural light and having them all open to open air for more than 10 minutes. We suggest fully following the procedure for more credible results. Also, we did not water them daily. The reason our procedure was changed was because we did not realize we wouldn’t be in class every day to water, so then we started coming to tutorial to water.

Results
Natural Light
Day 1: Salt 0cm, Tap 0cm, Coconut 0cm
Day 3: Salt 0cm, Tap 0cm, Coconut 1cm
Day 4: Salt 0cm, Tap 2 ¾ cm, Coconut 1 ¼ cm
Day 7: Salt 0cm, Tap 9 ¾ cm, Coconut 6cm
Day 8: Salt 0cm, Tap 11cm, Coconut 6cm
Day 10: Salt 0cm, Tap 12cm, Coconut 6cm





Red Light
Day 1: Salt 0 cm, Tap 0 cm, Coconut 0cm
Day 3: Salt 0 cm, Tap 1 cm, Coconut 1/ 2 cm
Day 4: Salt 0 cm, Tap 4 ¾ cm, Coconut 2 ½ cm
Day 7: Salt 0 cm, Tap 11 ½ cm, Coconut 3 ½ cm
Day 8: Salt 0 cm, Tap 11 ½ cm, Coconut 3 ½ cm
Day 10: Salt 0 cm, Tap 11 ½ cm, Coconut 3 ½ cm

Blue Light
Day 1: Salt 0 cm, Tap 0 cm, Coconut 0 cm
Day 3: Salt 0 cm, Tap 1 cm, Coconut ½ cm
Day 4: Salt 0 cm, Tap 5 ½ cm, Coconut 2 ¼ cm
Day 7: Salt 0 cm, Tap 12 cm, Coconut 3 cm
Day 8: Salt 0 cm, Tap 12 ½ cm, Coconut 3 cm
Day 10: Salt 0 cm, Tap 12 ½ cm, Coconut 3 cm

In the end of the experiment we had a wide variety of results. We found out that the water and light that grew the plants the best were tap water and blue light. We learned that salt water does not grow plants at all and coconut water molds over time. Our hypothesis was partially supported because our data and results showed natural water gave the best plant growth results but blue light was the better light. We didn’t get the results we thought we would because we carried out some of the parts of the experiment incorrectly. During our prep for our experiment, we only covered our blue and red light variables with the designated colored plastic wrap but left the natural light variable without any coverage. We should have covered it with clear wrap so all the variables would get equal air and light. Some improvements we could have made to the design were to make sure each variable got equal amounts of things and to narrow our control group to only one variable because multiple can cause confusion in the data and results. Our findings are important because in the real world, we now know how to grow plants with other types of materials.

As a result of this lab we now know that when plants are watered with coconut water, they tend to become moldy, plants die when watered with saltwater, and the color of light didn’t really affect the growth of the plants because in the end not one color made the plants grow better. But, the different waters affected the growth of the plants, and tap water made the broccoli grow big faster than the other waters, coconut and salt, by a longshot.

http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=3155
On that website it said that blue and red light helped plants grow.The different light has different light wavelengths which have different energy. And this energy is absorbed differently causing differences in growth. So that is where we got the idea to use red and blue for our other light sources. We found that website by searching on google if colored light affect plant growth.