Does Temperature Effect the Germination of Mustard Seeds?
Biological Problem:
“A keen gardener found an old packet of mustard seeds lodged behind some plant pots in the greenhouse and wondered whether the same number of seeds would germinate as from a recently purchased packet. He tried to germinate them but found fewer seeds grew compared to the newly purchased packet. He thought that this might be related to the temperature in the greenhouse”.
Aim:
The aim of my investigation is to see if temperature does actually influence the germination of mustard seeds.
Method:
- I am going to test the germination of mustard seeds at five different temperatures, these will be; -10°C, 10°C, 20°C, 30°C and 40°C
- To do this I will use five separate petri dishes of the same size.
- In each dish I will put just enough cotton wool in the dish as to cover the bottom.
- On top of the cotton wool, I will place 20 mustard seeds in each petri dish as evenly spaced out as I can.
- The seeds will need water to survive, so, I will pour 20cm3 of distilled water into each dish.
- I will have to wrap each petri dish in aluminium foil totally covered so that heat does not escape and so that light is not a variable in this experiment.
- At the same time, I will place my dishes in their temperature set environments and leave them there for 3 days.
- After 3 days I will unwrap the petri dishes and record my findings in a results table, showing how many mustard seeds germinated out of 20 for each temperature.
- To make this investigation more accurate I will analyse some of my classmates results because they are doing the same experiment as me so, I can also prove that my results are not just fluke.
- I will produce 4 sets of results and an average set of results and analyse them all, using line graphs and the chi-squared test.
