Research Page for The Bush School, Team 8

4/22/05 10:07AM - T8: First upload of our journal is complete. 3 days ago we added our seeds to their environment in water bottles with 2 cm of water added. After the first evening, we drained out the water from the bottle, and rinsed out the seeds. No signs of sprouting was seen. Today (third day) out of the four cups, one cup had about 5 sprouts from the buckwheat seeds. We are curious to find out why only one cup would have sprouting if they are all the same seeds, from the same package of seeds, and are all in the same environment.
4/24/05 4:28PM - Dr. Beverly Brown: Great question about why some are sprouting and others aren't. Sometimes small differences can have consequences in germination. We could consider each bottle as having its own "microclimate". Do you see any small differences in how the bottles are treated that might unintentionally affect the microclimate in each bottle?
4/25/05 3:56PM - T8 Response to Dr. Brown: We are on day 6. All of our germination bottles have a small number of sprouts. We found the sprouts to be roots, not shoots. We have decided to do an experiment on buckwheat seeds that controls the temperature of the environment. The purpose is to find what temperatures the seeds can germinate in. Do you have any advise for how we should approach out experiment? Do you have any knowledge of what temperatures limit the seeds? preferences in environments?
4/28/05 12:11PM - Dr. C. Hemingway: Your question about the affect of temperature on germination allows you to set up a rather sophisticated experimental design. This type of study has the fancy name of a "dose-response" study. You will want to test at least three temperatures: cold, room temperature, and warm. But, if you can, it would be fun to test a range of temperatures. What is range of temperatures do buckwheat seeds experience in nature? Buckwheat is not a native North American plant, athough it is widely planted as a crop here. Do a little research to find out where it is native and cultivated. That will help you decide what temperature extremes will be important to include in your experimental design.
5/2/05 3:37PM - T8 Response to Dr. Hemingway: Today we observed the three samples of seed in warm climate, and how they grew over the weekend. We put cups of water in each incubater along with the seeds so they could get water over the weekend. The seeds in 56 degrees celsius died the first day. The seeds in 38 degrees celsius there not completly dead, but they are not growing. The seeds in 29 degrees celsius is still green and growing. We still have to begin our part of the experiment by putting the seeds in cold climates.
5/2/05 3:42PM - Dr. Jeffrey Osborn: You have some great research questions and I look forward to seeing how you go about answering them. It might also be interesting to test whether keeping the seeds at a constant temperature vs. changing the temperature to reflect warmer days affects growth. That would change the direction of your experiment slightly, however.
5/5/05 10:51AM - T8 Response to Dr. Osborn: Yesterday, May 4, 2005, we changed our experiment because someone (who will remain nameless) forgot to take the buckwheat seeds home over the weekend to continue the project. So we have taken a suggestion and restarted our experiment. We placed four samples of seeds in four different plastic dishes labled 1, 2, 3, and 4. We weighed each sample (in grams) and placed sample 1 and 2 in one incubator set at a constant temperature (22 degrees celcius) and place samples 3 and 4 in another incubator with a daily fluctuating temperature between room temperature and 32 degrees celcius. We are attempting to determine whether buckwheat seeds grow better at a constant temperature or at a constantly changing temperature. We have to change the temperature manually daily, so the seeds in the second incubator spend between 12 and 48 hours at the same temperature. The shifting temperatures we change to random temperatures everyday (everyday that we have class) so that there is no way for the seeds to "predict"what temperature it will be next and for how long.