Research Page for Emporia State University, Team 3

Thu 6/9/2005 9:09 AM, T3-Kristin: First journal upload is complete. When posed with the finding a topic for our research project our group each put a suggestion in. 1. Test the effects of different types of light (i.e. black light, bulb light, fluorescent light, etc.) on the growth of plants. 2. Evaluate the capabilities of name brand fertilizing products that are nationally known compared to generic fertilizing products that state the claim that they are equal to the national brands. 3. Decifer how water conditions will effect plants growth buy controlling the amount of water delivered to the plant. In a group decision, we decided that we would hypothesize about and test option 2.
Mon 6/13/2005 2:13PM - Dr. Susan Singer : Greetings, Team 3. You've chosen three exciting areas of plant development and physiology to explore in your study. One of the huge challenges for plant biologists is measuring growth and reporting it in a way that other scientists can use to compare with their own data. I just returned from a meeting on legumes (peas, alfalfa, etc.) in California and two of the presentations were on ways to standardize growth measurements. I think you are wise to consider both height (try measuring to the shoot tip, not the tallest leaf) and days since germination. These variables can be affected by many factors. Looking at two growth measurements rather than one is a very sensible idea. Your fertilizer experiments should be quite interesting. You might want to compare both the amounts of nitrogen, potassium and phosphate in your different fertilizers and the ratios of the three major nutrients in each of your fertilizers. The amount of nitrogen relative to potassium, for example, could be as important as the total amount of nitrogen. Best wishes, Susan
Tue 6/14/2005 10:56 AM, T3-Nautami: Second journal upload is complete. We will be using six quart size mason jars for our experiment; two out of which will be used as controls with no fertilizer,two of which will have name brand fertilizer and the last two will have the store brand fertilizer. We will follow the directions for the fertilizer per container labeling. All other growing factors will be held as controls.
Wed 6/15/2005 1:15 PM - PEER COMMENT from Emporia Team 4 (David): Everyone who does any gardening wants to get the most bang for their buck. Generally name brand fertilizer is more expensive than others. My question is, in order for the experiment to be valid, do you not have to check the % of the ingedients in each of the two types of ferilizer? This may be something to consider because not all fertilizers have the same chemical compounds in the formula. I am interested in finding out your results, I tend to use cheaper fertilizer on my lawn and would like to know if more expensive fertilizer will produce better results.
Thu 6/16/2005 12:27 AM- PEER COMMENT from Emporia Team 4 (Betsy): My only question is shouldn’t you use the same watering and sunlight for your control and your two types of fertilizer? I think that it could make your results biased by simply following the directions on the packages of fertilizer because one brand may not be better, it just may have better growing conditions set out in the instructions on the package.
Fri 6/17/2005 12:2 PM, T3-Kristin: We began the experiment today with planting our seeds that were allowed to soak overnight in distilled water. Several of the seedlings had sprouts already vidiable on them. Some changes were made to the experiment. (See journal for details.)
Tue 6/21/2005 11:09 AM, T3-Amelia: Changes in Procedure. We planted our seeds on friday and left them over the weekend. On Monday their was substantial growth for the Expert and control pots and no growth on the miracle grow pots. All of the pots were very dry. We also noticed that our stored fertilizer has changed color. The expert fertilizer started off as a dark blue/grey color and after the weekend the color lightened. The Miracle Grow fertilizer went from a very dark aqua color to colorless on monday. Since their was soo much change in the color of the fertilizer, the pots were dry and no growth where we expected growth, we decided that we would run a new batch of seeds under differnt circumstances. We planted 5 alfalfa seeds per small party cup (roughly 8 ounces) in the perilight soil. We made up new batches of the fertilizer, using the directions as labeled on the packages. We are going to cover the beakers with fertilizer with tin foil and keep in the dark room and unrefridgrated this time. We watered each plant with 3.75Tbs of the matching liquid (either fertilizer or water). After watering we also placed peatree dishes on the top of the cups, in efforts to limit the loss of water from them. We again placed under the controlled light source in the dark room and will gather the data starting tommorow.
Fri 6/24/2005 8:14 AM- PEER COMMENT from Emporia Team 4 (Tyson): Have you thought about testing the tolerance of the fertilizer when referring to fertilizer burn?
Mon 6/27/2005 10:03 PM- PEER COMMENT from Emporia Team 4 (Betsy): I was wondering how you are planning to measure the growth of your seeds?
Wed 6/29/2005 1:16 PM, T3-Kristin: First data upload is complete.
Wed 6/29/2005 4:23 PM- PEER COMMENT from Emporia Team 4 (Dave): I was curious, we have been talking about tropism in class. Did you notice any phototropism or gravitropism in your experiment?
Thu 6/30/2005 3:45 PM - Dr. Susan Singer : Team 3. You've done a lot of work analyzing your data on Excel. Nice job with your graphs. I'd encourage you to think a bit more about David's questin, Tyson's question and mine about whether all the fertilizers had the same amount of nutrients. For example, is it possible that there was too much or not enough of some nutrient in Expert 1? What conclusions can you draw from your data? How can you tell when treatments are the same or different? You had a number of replicates for each treatment. How much variation was there among plants within a single treatment. Between two different treatments. Best wishes, Susan
Fri 7/1/2005 11:46 AM, T3-Amelia: Analysis: We decided that we were going to test the national brand(Miracle Grow) of fertilizer versuses the store brand(Expert) fertilizer and see which one grew better. According to our data, we decided that the control was the best growth on both the shoot and root structures and in both party cups and mason jars. The expert fertilizer did the second largest growing and the miracle grow had no growth at all. We feel that this was not related to the problem that we had with the miracle grow changing colors. When we decided to leave the miracle grow out of the refridgerator it did not change colors and this had no effect on the growth of either the shoots or roots. Based on our data, we conclude that using fertilizer had an adverse effect of the growth of shoots and roots of our seeds. GO CONTROL GROUP!:)
Fri 7/1/2005 4:18 PM - Dr. Sundberg : Team 3. You've had a good taste of research - - start out with a question and every time you try to answer it, more questions come up. Good job of making modifications to your procedure as necessary. Good work with your data. You do have differences between the fertilizers, but it's hard to tell if this confirms your initial hypothesis, or if you must reject it. By the end you had distinct differences between treatments - - but were they significant differences? How could you test this? (How did we test hypotheses in lab?) Good work.