GERMINATION Seed experiment

Hypotheses Our first hypothesis was that the seeds would grow best in plain water, but might also grow in fertilizer or salt. Our second hypothesis was that addition of vinegar to our dishes would likely kill any growth that had already started.

EXPERIMENT ONE Our first experiment was conducted to determine which solutions would effectively germinate seeds. We placed ten seeds in each of five petri dishes We used a different solution in each dish We predicted how many seeds per dish would sprout We came back a week later to check our dishes, and determine how accurate our predictions were.

Petri Dish Solution % Predicted % Germinated #1 Water 50 100 #2 Vinegar #3 Soap 20 #4 Salt #5 Fertilizer 60

EXPERIMENT TWO Our second experiment was to add vinegar to our petri dishes to see if we could alter any results that had occurred in the first experiment. We added 5 mL of vinegar to each dish We came back and checked them a week later

Petri Dish Solution % Germinated % Affected #1 Water + Vinegar 100 #2 Vinegar + Vinegar n/a #3 Soap + Vinegar 50 #4 Salt + Vinegar #5 Fertilizer + Vinegar

COMPARISON We assumed water would cause the seeds to germinate best, and we also thought they might grow in soap, salt, and fertilizer. The seeds actually germinated best in plain water, and surprisingly in soap. We didn’t expect any to live through the addition of vinegar, and the ones that were in soap with vinegar died. The ones that contained water and vinegar lived.

CONCLUSION We were wrong about how many would germinate, and about what would happen when we added vinegar. If we were to do this a third time, we would probably have split the seeds in half and only added vinegar to half of each original solution’s seeds, to keep a control group.