Activity 1 - Choose and Design Your OWN Plant Experiment

You will be doing an experiment of YOUR choosing on plants!

What do you need to do:

1. Pick an experiment and ask a PROBLEM QUESTION - remember: testable, consise and related to plants

• Are you asking a clear, consise, testable, and plant-related question?

2. Write a HYPOTHESIS. This is your prediction - often an IF/THEN statement (where you are evaluating what you expect to happen to the dependent variable when you manipulate the independent variable.

3. Do some BACKGROUND RESEARCH - make sure to include your sources (website, or MLA citations) and quote when necessary

WOULD A TEMPLATE HELP YOU KEEP YOUR EXPERIMENT ORGANIZED? 

• Click to access the Plant Experiment Lab Write Up

  • Please make sure to change the share settings so I can see it

  • You can use this template to complete ALL 3 parts of your experiment

HERE IS THE RUBRIC for activity one - for maximum points be sure to include as many of the elements in the green box on the far right at possible

Activity 2 - Plant Experiment continued - Running the experiment and collecting data

It is important to think about this part before you start running your experiment, but it is easy to forget to think about this part.

WHAT TYPE OF DATA DO I WANT TO COLLECT?

• Two types of data to choose from: Qualitative and Quantitative

  • QUALITATIVE DATA - is characterists, descriptions, direct observations (or any combinantion) - think of it like quality control, what does it look like or do

  • QUANTITATIVE DATA - is measurements or numbers - Think of it like the word quantity - that mean how many  or how much of something there are

HOW OFTEN SHOULD I COLLECT IT?

• This will depend on what you want to observe

  • Example: if you are comparing two different types of seeds (INDEPENDENT VARIABLE) to see how long it takes for them to geminate (start growing), you would want to make qualitative observations every day and record your data daily to see how many days it takes to start geminating (DEPENDENT VARIABLE) - remember to try to take measurements every day at the same time.

  • Example 2: if I wanted to test if a condition like adding sugar or salt  (INDEPENDENT VARIABLE) would help or hurt plant growth, I might want to start with plants that have already germinated and are the about the same size. then I might want to might choose to make onservations once or twice a week (on the same day each time) to see if there were changes to the plant - possibly number of leaves that were lost or the change in height. What are you going to use as your DEPENDENT VARIABLE?

  • Example 3: if I wanted to know how long the roots (DEPENDENT) on sweet potato cuttings  would grow under two different contitions (INDEPENDENT), might only take measurements at the beginning and end of the experiment.

HOW SHOULD I COLLECT THE DATA?

• You can can make a graph or data table or chart

  • HERE is a copy of a template that you can use if you need help making your data table

    • REMEMBER: YOU CAN Change and edit this anyway you need to you many need more or less boxes

• You might record or take pictures of your observations to help you make sense of your data after it is all collected (see example images)

HERE IS THE RUBRIC for activity two - for maximum points be sure to include as many of the elements in the blue box on the far right at possible

Are our toe prints as unique as our fingerprints? You will need the prints of AT LEAST 5 different people (ideally all 10 toes)

What is expected: 

1. State your hypothesis (i/then statement) - what do you think is true about toe prints

2. Background: Discuss what you knew before you started. (This should include research you have done on the topic - please provide webites you looked at to celebrate your hard work, you can also include the video about fingerprints and toe prints provided  here)

3. Materials:  What did you use to obtain the prints? inkpad and paper or did you use a different technique?

4. Describe: Explain HOW you are doing the experiment (Add as many steps as necessary)

5. Descibe the pattern of each toe print.

6. Determine if your hypothesis is correct or incorrect (remember it is always ok to learn that your hypothesis was partially or completely incorrect, that is part of being a scientist)

7.  Quote your data. What in your data helped you determine if your hypothesis was correct or incorrect?

8. Error in data collection - what are some things that could have gone wrong or may impact your data collection?

Sources of Error Analysis Support

Don't have access to 5 people?!

• HERE are some toe prints from  an article from Science Direct - remember if you use these, you did not collect these so your information above should reflect what they did.

Activity: Distractions (Reaction Time)

Diagram a Food Web

Draw a food web (not the same examples as this lesson or the examples provided here)

Make sure to include:

1. producer

2. primary consumer

3. secondary consumer

4. tertiary consumer

It is also a good idea to show decomposers when possible.

This video from KHAN ACADEMY might help in idenfiying different roles so that you can make sure to include things in your diagram ⏩

You can always draw on paper or the computer. HERE is a copy of a template in google draw you may use.