Chia Seed Lab - Kaitlyn and Alexa
How does the environment effect chia seed growth (mm)?
Background Info
Purpose
Hypothesis
Control
The 5cm of regular dirt (Miracle Grow), representing general soil.
Experimental Group
Independent Variable
The different types of “environmental materials” serving as the plant’s soil (Sand, paper towel, and dirt)
Dependent Variable
How many days pass until the chia plants reach six inches tall.
Constants
Amount of (tap) water (8 mL), Dixie plastic cup, environment location (window sill), sunlight, amount of seeds (9), amount of soil (5 cm deep)
Extaneous Variables
The temperature, amount of daily sunlight
Materials
What you will need is three paper Dixie cups, 5cm of sand, 5cm of Miracle Grow , 5cm of paper towels, (tap) water, 27 chi chia seeds, cm ruler.
Procedure
Retrieve all of the listed materials.
Label the three Dixie cups---let one be A, one B, one C.
Fill cup A five cm deep with the Miracle Grow. Fill cup B five cm deep with sand. Fill cup C five cm deep with paper towels.
Place 9 chi chia seed into each of the cups, just under a layer of the “soil”.
Place all three cups into a sunlit area, preferably on a window sill. Do not move cups A, B, or C for the remainder of the experiment.
Pour 8 mL of tap water into each of the cups. Repeat this step daily at 1:00 - 1:30 pm.
Measure the height of the growing plants daily in centimeters. Record observations and dates until each of the plants have reached 6cm in height.
Compare data and confirm which plant grew to 6cm in the shortest amount of time.
Data
___________________
Plant A (Miracle Grow):
Days 1-5= No results
Day 6= 4mm
Day 7= 15mm
Day 8= 15mm
Day 9= 20mm
Day 10= 28mm
Day 11= 32mm
Day 12= 37mm
Plant B (Sand):
Days 1-7= No results
Day 8= 2mm
Day 9= 5mm
Day 10= 9mm
Day 11= 13mm
Day 12= 15mm
Plant C (Paper Towels):
Days 1-12: No results
Conclusion
In conclusion we wanted to see if different types of soils affected how tall chia seeds grow. We predicted that if you planted chia seeds in soil it will grow the fastest because plants tend to grow faster when shown the natural nutritious dirt. Our background information proves this because sand doesn't has very nutritious factors to it. And a paper towel definitely doesn't because its just plain there is no ingredients that could help the plant grow. When soil has natural ingredients that help the plants. Our data shows that the chia seeds that were in the soil grew the best with 37 mm. The sand did not do as well but still grew a plant it got to a height of 15 mm. The paper towel did not grow anything. This data proves that our hypothesis was correct because the chia seed with the soil grew the highest. An error that happened was that one of the days we didn't collect data. An extraneous variable that occurred was that we could not water the plants on the weekends. For future experiment we would add more water for the everyday watering and continue to test the experiment to see how high they grew and see if one of the independent variables could catch up to the soil.