Once I have recorded the results from the cups I will add two seeds to each of them: - the reason for putting two seeds into each of the cups is to increase the chances of germination. i.e. One seed may not germinate, but I will still have results from the other seed. I will put all the seeds at the same depth in each of the cups, and as close to the centre as I can put them. I will put the seeds at a depth of 30 milimetres (measured from the highest point of the seed).
When I have put all the seads into all of the cups I will add the amount of fertilizer I have stated above. To ensure that the test is fair I will use a measuring cylinder and measure out each amount to the best of my abilities, to do this I will make sure my eyeline is to the specified amount making the measuring more acurate.
Once the cups are labeled suitably to allow me to easily identify them when I come to look at them again I will put them in the sunlight on a windowsil. To make this fair I will put them all in a row next to one another, aswell as making sure they will get an even amount of sunlight (i.e. not having 2 cups behind a pillar and the others in direct sunlight).
After all that I have wrote is compleate I will leave the seeds to grow for 2 weeks (the duration of my work expirence), this should allow time for enough growth to see a difference between the plants.
When I return from work expirence I will take the plant out carefully, brush off any excess soil and weigh the plant like that. I will do it that way because if I weigh the plant pot with the plant in it, it will be reasonably accurate – the reason for me taking it out is that foreign bodies such as flies and spiders may have got into the pot.
I’ll record all my results in the form of tables, then draw graphs to give a graphical representation of them. Using both the tables and the graphs I should be able to make a good, fair, correct conclusion.
Here are diagrams to help explain my method of going about ths experiment:
From my background research I predict that more fertilizer on the plants would mean that the faster they grow, I say this because the fertilizer contains at least one of the three elements needed to sustain life: Therefore in larger quanitities the plant should grow faster, and better. For example Phosphorus in the fertilizer should increase the speed of the growth of the plant, Nitrogen should improve the health finally Potassium, this makes the plant more durable – these three things combined in a fertilizer should definatly aid the plant in growth amount and speed.
Unforunatly, while on work expirence only one of the ten seeds actually germinated and began to grow. Because of this, I have no results – however, the same problem happened to most of the people in my biology class. Our teacher thankfully had a set of results from a previous year, althought they had a different amount of fertilizer in each of the cups, they were still keeping everything else the same and like us placed their pots in the same place, and put the seeds down 30 millimetres.
Conclusion:
My results show that my prediction was right – an increase in the amount of fertilizer also increases the average mass of the plant. This occours because the fertilizer contains the nutrients the plant needs to grow. Also, after looking at my results I saw that the increase of mass was to a lesser extent after 0.6ml: - Because the growth rate then goes down, I would asume there would be an amount of fertilizier that would give the maximum amount of growth: for example it could not grow faster and there would be no point in adding more fertilizer. This would be an important factor for a farmer to consider – he wants to increase the crop yeild by as much as possible, and also wants to be keep cost effective at the same time: he would have to find the biggest increase in crop yeild using the least amount of fertilizer. Which, in this experiment was 6ml.
Unfortunatly adding more fertilizer does not nesecarily mean higher yeild/faster growth. This is the same with planting a seed does not mean it will grow. Every seed/plant is unique and so will grow at different rates and yeild different amounts. The only way to tell how much more a plant will grow is to take an average: with my experiment I took an average of just two plants – if I wanted more accurate results I would of added a few more. In industry they take the average of over 100 plants for example.
However, from my average (however accurate it may be) I can still say that increased amounts of ferilizer increases the mass of the plant, but higher amounts of fertilizer makes the plant increase in mass less dramatic. As these results show:
Evaluation:
The results for this experiment turned out as I had expected however it was a difficult experiment to gain accurate results for as each plant is different and therefore has a different growth rate. It is not possible to tell before the start of the experiment which seeds will germinate therefore not all the plants will grow, if one plant doesn’t grow then this affects all the results as the plant in the same pot which did grow would have more fertiliser than it would if both had grown therefore it would not be an accurate result. Even if all the plants germinate the results are not very exact as some plants were a lot bigger than the other one in the same pot, however taking the average of both plants in the same pot gives me a more accurate set of results. For more accurate results I could have grown more plants with the same amounts of fertiliser and taken the average of those as well, this would also have shown me any anomalous results. I think the range of results I have is good because it shows how the increases decrease as the mass of the plants are bigger, if I had used a larger amount of fertiliser I think that my results would have stopped increasing at all and therefore would not be very helpful. The results I got were accurate for the experiment I did.
