Science Experiment Reflection 

Inquiry question:

1. Are plants affected by the opacity of their container?

Aim:

1. We are trying to find out if snow peas and cress are affected by the opacity of the cup surrounding them.

In our experiment we are going to keep the same: 

1. Amount of soil
2. Amount of water per day
3. Where the cups are put to grow

In our experiment we are changing:

1. The opacity of the cups.

We are going to measure and observe:

1. The growth of the plants and what the differences are.

Our hypothesis is:

1. The plants in the transparent cups will grow the fastest and the best then the translucent cup and then the opaque cup will grow the least or will not grow at all.

Materials we are using are:

1. Soil/potting mix
2. One measuring jug/beaker
3. Snow pea and Cress seeds 
4. A windowsill (for the cups to sit on)
5. 3 cups (transparent, translucent and opaque)
6. Paper towel (for the the top of the cups so the sun comes through the cup)
7. 2 eyedroppers/6 ml
8. Water

In conclusion, we were right. The transparent is the best grower for both cress and snow peas. The opaque snow pea is probably dead as it has split in half. Translucent has been close behind transparent for both tests, suddenly right at the end of the experiment the translucent snow pea grew and we were very surprised about those results.

Seeing the plants growing was definitely a highlight for the whole group. It had shown that our hard work had paid off in the best of ways. One day, the cress was just a seed, and the next it had grown enormous roots. Before we knew it the snow peas had sprouted very suddenly as well.Another highlight was planting the seeds in the cups.

The challenges of doing an ongoing experiment were the obvious ones; Keeping up with our fellow scientists, and choosing how to spend our time wisely. Our results and conclusions were always behind, as we always had new data and things to do. (Watering plants). We had to be very careful what we did.We solved the challenges by pushing on and making wise decisions as a group when playing with time, and we started to plant our back up cress seeds because they grow very fast and we didn’t have much time to do it all.

What we learned from our experiment is that if you choose an opaque pot, it will not affect its growth that much. The results were very close and it didn’t vary much. Transparent translucent and opaque cups do not affect the growth a lot when you are growing cress. As with snow peas having your plants in an opaque cup might kill the plants.

   What do you think I could of done better in this experiment?