Investigate Plants: High School Research Ideas

[hikki_pop]

has anyone got some ideas on a good, yet simple high school type of investigative research related to plants?? 0_o thanks for your help!

 

[iansmith]

You could look at the effect of different level of chemicals and nutrient on the growth of the plant.

 

[hikki_pop]

You could look at the effect of different level of chemicals and nutrient on the growth of the plant.

cool! that sound good! ^_^ hmm... can you give some ideas on any chemicals and nutrients which can be suitable for the experiment??

 

[iansmith]

Plant need nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium as their basic nutrient. What you could do is used different mixture and form of these elements. For example, you can compare two or more different source of nitrogen such as ammonia vs nitrates (this a common comparison) and see if there is change in plant growth. For chemicals you could any product in your house or pesticide from the local store.

 

[hikki_pop]

oh wow! thanks~ :)

 

[Moonbear]

Pesticides can be pretty dangerous to work with, so those might not be the best choice. Instead, maybe use different kinds of plant foods (the nutrient suggestion). When you read the label on plant food, they often list right on the front 3 numbers, those correspond to the ratios of nutrients in the fertilizer, though I can't recall which one is which (ask someone who works at the store). Try plant foods with different ratios. Often those are intended for different plants, for example tulip food will have a different ratio than tomato food than grass food. However, if you try this, what will you use as controls? That's going to be important if you are doing this for a high school project (or any experiment). You need something that you know should help your plant grow (positive control) and something that you know should have no effect on plant growth (negative control).

Also make sure everything else is the same, like measuring the amount of water you put on each plant so they all get the same and planting each in the same amount of soil all from the same bag and try to keep them all the same distance from your light source (or rotate them daily so they all get equal time being close to the source or far from the source)...this way you only have one variable, amount of fertilizer (or whatever you choose to vary).