Nutrient Nibblers Planting Science Experiment Results by: Sophia F., Olivia K., Ava B., and Jordan T.

Research Question Is growing plants using fish feces as fertilizer an effective way of growing plants?

Research Predictions/Hypothesis If we use water containing fish feces then the plants will be fertilized by the feces and grow taller, healthier, and faster. In addition, if we use the water from the fish tank then the tank will be cleaner and our experiment will also benefit the fish.

Experimental Design We are testing if using fish feces as fertilizer is a sufficient way to grow plants such as Soy Beans. The experimental group will be watered with water straight from the fish tank. There will be twenty-four seeds in six pots with three for each group (experimental and control) with four seeds in each pot. In our control group, we are going to grow these same plants the traditional way in pots and watered with tap water. After two weeks, we will uproot our plants and compare the growth rates between the experimental and control group.

List of Materials ~Petri dishes ~Tap Water ~Paper towels ~Soil ~Soybean seeds (24) ~Little cups (6) ~Soil ~Duct Tape ~Fish tank ~Paper Clips ~Three goldfish ~ One Zebrafish ~One golden sucker

Data Table DateControl Group In Millimeters Experimental Group In Millimeters 11/16/ /17/ /18/ /19/ /20/

Graphs

Photos Over Time

Research Conclusion Our experimental plants grew significantly better than the control group as our hypothesis predicted. We found that our experimental group was bigger in height and weight than the control group. In the end, the experimental group was millimeters taller than the control group.

Improvements We found that using one type of plant is the best for this experiment. From restarting our experiment, we learned that when plant seeds are not properly taken care of in the early stages, it can severely affect eventual plant growth. Also we learned that if plants are not grown under the same light source it can alter results of growth. If we were to do this experiment again, we would probably want to conduct the experiment over a longer period of time. In the future we will keep in mind the things we struggled with when doing other experiments.

A Special Thank You To... We would like to specially thank our mentor Juliet Oshiro! She helped us through so much of our experiment and we would have been totally lost without her. She is the best mentor ever, and we never could have asked for a better one, because there isn't! THANK YOU JULIET!!

A Thank You to Mrs.Buzzell We would like to give a special thanks to our science teacher Mrs.Buzzell. She helped us a lot throughout our experiment, including giving us our fish, lending us her fish tank, and overall being one of our biggest supporters. ~Sophie Mrs. Buzzell was nice enough to let us use her fish, fish tank, and her classroom and we are very thankful that she is our science teacher ~ Ava We are very thankful for all of the advice she gave to us. We are also very glad that she allowed us to take home the fish we used for our experiment.~Olivia Thank you for helping us. We are glad that you could be your science teacher for doing this project!~Jordan