Research Page for Emporia State University, Team 4

Mon 6/13/2005 6:57 PM, T4 - Betsy: Our first journal upload is complete. Our Tentative Research Plan is: We discussed our research today and decided to use alfalfa seeds because they grow fast. Next, we decided to have 4 control seeds with distilled water, 4 seeds with the 50% Splenda sugar solution, and 4 seeds with the 50% regular sugar solution. The seeds will all be planted in small Styrofoam cups filled three-fourths the way with potting soil. All of the cups will be placed under sun lamps and left at room temperature. We are going to water all of the seeds with the appropriate solution on Mondays and Thursdays with a defined amount in milliliters. We do not know how much to water the seeds yet because we don't want it to be too much or too little so we are going to decide on our first watering. Finally, we are going to check the growth of our seeds Monday through Friday, once a day. The growth will be measured by the chute height in millimeters and by the number of leaves.
Fri 6/17/2005 12:24 PM - PEER COMMENT from Emporia Team 3 (Kristin): In typical experiments one factored is often labeled the control. In your experiment will you be conduction a control group that receives no sugar so that you can base your findings of the effects of sugar on plants against? Also what is the amount of time that your are going to allow your experiment to run and to continue to take measurements?
Mon 6/20/05 7:09 PM - T4 Response to Emporia, Team 3 (Dave): You asked in your comment, do we have a control group. Yes, our control group was given distilled water. This will allow us to compare the sugar solution and splenda solution to a control with no variables.
Tue 6/21/2005 9:56 AM - Betsy: Our journal is updated with details on our experiment.
Tue 6/21/2005 9:58 AM - Dave: When we returned to class from the weekend I went over and checked the growth of our seeds. The control group with distilled water showed growth in the form of sprouts. However, none of the seeds in the sugar water showed growth, and only one in the splenda water showed a sprout. A question that this brings to mind is that could this be due to ph levels in each of the solutions? Ph levels can be easily tested, this may be a direction we need to take. Dave Taylor Team 4 is complete.
Tue 6/21/2005 11:04 AM - PEER COMMENT from Emporia Team 3 (Nautami): hi. i just went over your journal right now and everything looks good. But i heard in class that you guys were starting the experiment over, so are you using the same things over again or something else. Well your experiment sounds, good luck with the new experiment.
Tue 6/21/2005 11:15 AM - PEER COMMENT from Emporia Team 3 (Amelia): I think that the experiment is a good idea, however I wanted to know what the imporantance of having the sugar solutions added to the plants would have on their growth. I also wanted to know if the plants were going to be stored in a dark room, to really control the light source that was being used, or was their also alternate light(the ceiling lights) that would also come into effect?
Wed 6/22/2005 10:13 AM - Dr. Beverly Brown : I'm curious to know why you want to test different sugar solutions? How did you arrive at this experiment? I'm glad to see you are controlling multiple variables. Do you have an explicit hypothesis to test?
Mon 6/27/05 5:19 PM - T4 Response to Dr. Brown, Team 3 (Dave): Today there is much research on the ill-effects of artificial sweeteners. Splenda is now a substitute for aspartame, which many believe can be the cause of serious health problems for humans, (ex. grandmal siezures) I was intriguded on whether artificial sweeteners would have adverse affects on plantae as it does on animalia. Plus today, the consumer is led to believe that these artificial sweeteners are safer. I was wanting to see if our results would disprove this idea.
Tue 6/28/2005 5:19 PM - Dave: Our journal is updated with data collected Monday and Tuesday.
Fri 7/1/2005 10:00 AM - Betsy: Our journal is updated and our Excel data are uploaded.
Fri 7/1/2005 5:06 PM - Dr. Sundberg : I think you've gotten a taste of authentic research. Problems arose during the first trial that you didn't anticipate and you had to work some things out before your next run. You certainly have some dramatic results and you've discussed some possible explanations that would have been worth investigating if you didn't run out of time. I do have a couple of concerns, though. You say you must reject your hypothesis, but I still don't think it was clearly stated - - even after the question from Dr.Brown. I'm surprised you didn't summarize your data by plotting mean and SE for your 3 treatments. You did have four repetions. Wouldn't this help you to evaluate the appropriateness of your sample size as well as make more definitive comparisons between treatments? (How did we handle this kind of data in lab?) Dr. Sundberg
Tue 7/5/2005 5:18 PM - Dr. Beverly Brown : Thanks for explaining the reason you wanted to experiment with sugar solutions. Dr. Sundberg did a great job pointing out the "lessons learned" from your experiment. It might be useful to do a bit of research on what is known about the effect of sugar solutions on plant growth to help you link some of your findings with the physiology of seed germination. This might help you make more sense of your results. Good luck with whereever your next experiment leads you!